Quietus
by ShyLight
Summary: G1: Something went wrong, Sideswipe realized. He just wasn't sure what, and nobody would tell him.
1. Chapter 2

He couldn't move. Something heavy was on top of him weighing him down but he couldn't see what it was. He felt like his whole body was on fire. He felt like his whole body was bitter cold. The paradoxical sensations felt like they would rip him apart.

Something had gone wrong, he noted dully. What had gone wrong though? He wasn't sure.

There was pain. A kind of pain he had forgotten about, one he probably never really knew. It was wrenching at him through waves, rippling through his core. Every nerve receptor was alight with hurt. His outside hurt. His inside hurt. His entire being hurt.

Yet he couldn't move.

He was trapped on his back, his arms at his side and empty seeming gaze straight up at the smoke filled sky.

To anyone he probably appeared, unconscious, unaware, and unresponsive.

They wouldn't know that he was completely aware. They wouldn't know that he was feeling such horrific pain.

But he couldn't move.

There was a song playing. It was soft and warbled but somehow cut through the sound of smoke, water and glass. It was coming from a jukebox that had miraculously survived the carnage and was still playing a soft, but distorted tune.

"_Don't be like the one who made me so old  
Don't be like the one who left behind his name  
'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine  
And nobody ever came..."_

Cybertronians could not cry. It was physically impossible for their race. Crying was something human, an expressive reflex their species used in response to extreme emotions or pain.

He wished he could cry.

The pain was extraordinary. It was unending. It was like his spark had been replaced by slow burning sulphur that ate him from the inside out. It was burning him. It was freezing him. He wanted to scream. He wanted to curl up and claw at his chest, at his armor, at all the sources of his agony. He wanted to cry though it was impossible for his kind to do so.

He couldn't do any of that. He couldn't even move.

Yet he could hear, and the sound of glass crunching and debris being shoved out of the way registered dismally in his audios. Despite being alerted that something was approaching, there wasn't much he could do. Friend or Foe he was stuck.

Almost. He almost wished it was an enemy. Then there would be relief. His pain would stop. It would be ended. But he was not one to give himself up to such thoughts. Not even under the most horrific conditions

Maybe

The crunching of concrete and the cracking of glass stopped.

"Primus." He heard someone gasp. The voice was familiar.

Prowl.

There was no time for relief. His vision began to blur and static and started to fade in and out. Time began to distort and his consciousness began to deteriorate. He began to lose time with every flicker of his optics.

Flicker

Prowl was suddenly at his side staring over at him. For once Prowl's usual composure was nonexistent. He was attempting to remain calm, but the look on Prowl's face, Prowl's usually stoic and emotionless face, was one of complete horror and revulsion. He looked like he was about to be sick. Still he tried to use reassuring words to comfort him.

It was hard to be comforted by someone so uncharacteristically alarmed.

Flicker

Was his vision starting to double? Was it an allusion caused by his malfunctioning body and depleting energy or were there really two beings hovering over him now?

The other one began to speak. Angry, gruff, scared even. This voice belonged to Ratchet. Or did it? When did Ratchet ever sound scared? He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember, much of anything at the moment.

He was in the now. The now hurt.

_(Why was I here?)_

Both Ratchet and Prowl were moving the debris off of him frantically, muttering things that he could no longer understand as his hearing began to fail sporadically. Only bits and pieces of their words could be caught.

"…Cerebral bleed, lacerations of the….Primus this shouldn't have hap… crushed, he's completely….Bad information… Can't save…."

The heavy weight that had been pinning him into the rubble and glass was removed. Prowl and Ratchet had dragged it off him and all he managed to register was the sound of the object scraping across his chest and the strangled choking sound Ratchet made for some reason. Or maybe he imagined that last part. It was a possibility. The pain was numbing his thoughts and his systems were starting to fail. One by one.

Maybe that's why the sky was looking so broken now, because his sight was deteriorating even worse. No longer was it blue, but instead it was an angry red with a jagged plume of acrid smoke dividing it in half.

There was a moment of nothing and suddenly he was being pulled up.

The pain burned worse.

Flicker

He was being half carried, half dragged by Ratchet and Prowl by the arms away from the rubble, and the glass and the smoke.

His head was limp and lulled against his chest. The sky was no longer in his vision, only the scorched and pocked ground.

He could see what used to be cheap linoleum flooring still smoldering and curling up from the ground from the heat. He could see the shattered remains of tables and chairs charred into almost unrecognizable charcoal, and little pieces of glass that melted under some great heat and recooled into various spherical shapes.

And a fiery blue liquid was being left in his wake, he notice. For a split second his fascination with the charged blue droplets and how they seemed to lose their energy once they hit the ground was able to distract him from the pain. The glowing blue liquid would shine bright as lighting for a brief moment and then it would fade to be dull. Dull as water.

It took a moment for him to realize that the glowing blue liquid was actually a vital life fluid and that it was coming from him.

The warbled song from the jukebox began to fade in the distance.

Flicker

There were so many shadows, distorted and unrecognizable, standing around him now. The only feature he could truly make out was the glow of blue optics set in the dark silhouettes.

Three of the shadows were touching him, digging into his limbs and tearing off his armor as they frantically shouted muffled commands to each other.

There were red hands, black hands and blue hands. Each set was doing a different task. He couldn't tell if they were trying to put him back together or if they were taking him apart.

He couldn't ask though. He could only lay there and listen to the voices above through a cotton haze.

"Stop the bleeding. He'll be ensanguinated before we can save him. We have to stop-"

"-the major components in his legs are decimated. Ratch', we can't fix this on the field! He's"

"-not stable yet! Shut up and stop that from sparking!"

Flicker

The shadows were still hovering over him like crazed insects attracted to a light but were no longer frantically prodding at him.

The outer pain was dulled, and numb. The inner pain was worse. Burning. It felt like burning. It was almost unbearably hot. Why was it so hot?

_(What was I doing?)_

A new shadow appeared above. Despite not being able to distinguish features he recognized the dark shape simply because of its goliath size: Optimus Prime.

And Optimus Prime was talking to him and gently lifting him off the ground as if he'd break if handled too carelessly.

The scenery was changing in a blur, and in the vertigo, though it sounded tinny and distant, he was able to catch one thing that his leader had said before setting him down somewhere.

"Hang on, Sideswipe. You'll be ok."

For a moment Sideswipe thought that in the distance he could still hear that jukebox.

"_Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over  
Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over."_

Thoughts raced through his mind as the pressure around him changed (where they flying now? Was he in Omega Supreme or Skyfire?)

What had happened?

Why was this happening?

**This shouldn't be happening.**

The pain that had been scorching his body finally burned out and there was numbness.

And there was blackness.


	2. Chapter 3

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Sideswipe's optics powered on a little slower than usual. It took a brief moment for the blackness in his vision to fade completely.

His body felt numb meaning painkillers were probably involved. He flopped his right arm back and began prodding at the back of his neck before finding where the neural buffer wire was jacked.

Nice.

He could hear the beeps and hums of varying machines and the room smelt strongly of antiseptics and the fear of grown mechs.

Obviously he was in the Medical bay.

He began the arduous task of sitting up first by rolling onto his side. If it wasn't bad enough that he felt weak as a kitten from, well, whatever the hell had happened to him, he also had a plethora of tubes and wires attached to his body weighing him down even more.

"Well ain't this just sugar and candy, and everything dandy?" he grunted before he moved again.

His body creaked and squealed in protest but he managed to get himself in an upright position.

From there he took inventory of his injuries. There was an insane amount of weld marks that hadn't been sanded down yet on his body. A particularly gruesome one seemed to encircle his entire left thigh, right above where a blue plastic tarp was draped over his knee and shin guard.

He inspected the dents, the still partly open gashes on his arms and prodded the horrific scrapes and weld marks that were on his back. Bits and pieces of his armor were missing. Most notably his right armguard was absent as was most of his red chest plate. The softer (and still torn up) black and white dermal plating of his chest was revealed under what little red remained there.

Slowly he traced his fingers up the side of his face, and the wires attached to his arm clicked and clattered together as he did so. He felt the roughness of a weld mark on his right cheek but other than that his face seemed ok. There was a nasty fissure on the side of his helm though. He must have hit his head.

Really, really hard.

Sideswipe let his arm drop and gave an impressed whistle. He almost felt like applauding whoever managed to do this to him because by George, beating up Sideswipe was no easy feat. And whatever good fellow managed to get the drop on him had been thorough.

"I am so glad someone invented pain killers."

This was just… horrific, he thought as he tapped the lip of a rather deep cut in his arm. Even he wasn't dumb enough not to realize how bad he must've been hurt. He couldn't even think of the last time he had been this beat up.

He prodded the thick welding scars on his thigh.

Oh thank the _heavens_ for painkillers.

"Wait until Sunny sees-" Sideswipe froze, looked around hysterically, and almost fell into a mad panic when he realized that he didn't see his brother anywhere.

'_Oh no. Oh no. Where's-?'_

"Well it's about time you woke up."

Apparently Sideswipe had been looking at the wrong side of the room.

As if on cue his brother sauntered across the space and stopped just short of Sideswipe's berth. Other than the nasty scowl on his face he was looking flawless. There was not a scratch marring his gold paint or single dent in his armor. It almost was like he never even went into battle at all.

Actually, maybe he hadn't been in that battle, or whatever it was that had steamrolled Sideswipe into the land of (almost) no repair. He didn't exactly remember what happened, or where anyone was at the aforementioned time. The red mech had a sinking feeling that the fact that his helmet was almost cracked in two had something to do with that.

"Hi, Sunny." Sideswipe waved as a greeting. The wires attached to his arm followed the motion like a bunch of colorful streamers.

"You're a moron."

Sideswipe winced and retracted his hand. "Ouch. You hurt me, Bro. Devastation has just swept through my heart like tumbleweed. I'll never recover, Sunny. Never!"

His brother glared.

Seeing as Sunstreaker was having none of it, Sideswipe dropped the theatrics. "Oh come on. What did I do?"

An ugly fury crept across Sunstreaker's face. Not saying another word he angrily gestured his arms at Sideswipe.

"What?"

"Have you even _looked_ at yourself?"

"Hey. You worry about your own looks. Just cuz you're obsessed with cleanliness doesn't mean we all have to be OCD too. All things in moderation you know."

"You," Sunstreaker jabbed a finger accusingly at Sideswipe, "Look like you fell in a pit full of Sharkticons."

He shrugged. "I may have for all I know. By the way, how come I feel like I got into a sixteen Mack- truck pileup and you look like you just stepped out of a car wash?" Sideswipe, stiffly and slow as he did it, tried turning his body to face his brother. He managed, but he also managed to get himself tangled in the wires that were crisscrossing his form like a malevolent, multicolored spider web.

His brother grumbled, "How the hell am I supposed to know what you got your idiotic self into if you don't know?"

Sideswipe pouted and swatted a pink wire out of his face. He tried detangling the colored strands attached to his body but it was proving to be a futile task.

"Some help you are." First he glared, then his optics widened as he realized something. " Holy cow, I can't feel my left leg."

"I mean really. Where is your_ head_ half of the time?"

"It's above my shoulders. Sunstreaker, I can't _feel_ my leg."

"What are you griping about? It's still there. Ratchet just hasn't finished attaching all the wiring and stuff."

Sideswipe froze like a pond in December. "Sweet, Primus. Ratchet's gonna murder me."

"That would kinda not make sense what with all the work he put into slapping you together again."

"Don't you understand? That's part of the scheme. He revived me from the brink so he could kill me. Then he'll bring me back and do it again. It'll be an endless cycle!"

Sunstreaker snickered.

Sideswipe continued his rantings, "I mean I understand why he yells at me most of the time but this time I don't even know what I did to myself! Jeez, did I get caught in a turbine or something? Did Grimlock decide he wanted to eat the cherry Lamborghini? Maybe it was Snarl. I get the vibe that Snarl hates me."

"They all hate you."

"Well he hates me more than the others."

"No Dinobots tried to eat you."

"Then what happened? I want to know the charges before Ratchet incarcerates me."

"You think I know?" It was a statement more than a question.

"I was kinda hoping you could fill me in so yeah." The numbness was wearing off and a dull throb of pain began to blossom over Sideswipe's body. "Well there go the painkillers. Do you think if I fake a conniption Ratchet will give me more?"

Sunstreaker folded his arms over. "Can't you ever be serious? You've been completely out for a week."

"What? Ouch!" Sideswipe almost tore the neural buffer right out of his neck when he jerked forward. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.

"Quit moving you, dummy." Sunstreaker sighed and his expression softened. He looked his brother over, "You look like crap."

"Thanks," Sideswipe responded sarcastically though his twin's comment aptly described what he felt like. "And you don't why?"

He shrugged. "I didn't get the same damage I guess. I've been up for a long time. "

That meaning he had plenty of time for buffing and polishing. But that also gave Sideswipe another clue. Sunstreaker had been involved in the fight. He just hadn't seen what happened to Sideswipe.

"Just be glad I even bothered visiting you." Sunny placed his hands on his hips.

Sideswipe gave him a look of mock offence. "What? No flowers? Not even a fruit basket for you poor, crippled brother? Well Gee. At least you decided to grace me with your presence. I feel honored… and like I was hit by a train. You sure you don't want to fill me in on what happe-?"

"I don't know! That's the fifth time you've asked! Stop asking!" Sunstreaker glared. "Is there a problem?"

"Of course not. That's why I'm shaking my fist at you."

"Look. If I knew I'd tell you. So we could kick the ass of whoever did this."

Ah. There it was again. The concern his brother so frantically tried to hide most of the time was gleaming through. Sideswipe snickered. "What if it _was _a pit of Sharkticons?"

"Then it might take a little bit longer to kick their asses. It's not like we don't have time on our hands," he said in a 'well-duh' voice.

"I guess that's true." Sideswipe traced the edge of a gash on his arm again. "Well, if nothing else, I'm glad to see you took some time out of your busy primping schedule to come visit me, Goldilocks."

A sour look bloomed on Sunstreaker's face. "Don't push it, Gimpy. Injured or not, I'll still push your bed down the side of the mountain if you get too annoying."

"Nooo. Stop channeling Ratchet. It's insanely creepy." Sideswipe frowned and pulled out one of the cumbersome wires attached to his chest. A faint, annoying buzz followed the action as one of the machines stopped getting the readings.

Sunstreaker straightened up. "Ya know speaking of our beloved physician, I'm gonna leave before Ratchet gets here."

"Whoa, what?" Sideswipe looked surprised. "Why? You've been in here for four minutes and you're leaving? "

"Ratchet's in a weird mood. I'd prefer avoiding him."

"Weird as in how? Weird as in 'I'll go ninja on your aft and punt you into the next state' weird?"

"Not exactly. It's sort of hard to explain. You'll probably see for yourself."

"How do you know he's even coming?"

"Please, every medic in the Ark has been frantic over you this past week. There's also that." Sunstreaker pointed to the buzzing, flat lining machine with his thumb.

Sideswipe took a gander at the machine, then looked back to wire he had plucked from his person. "That probably wasn't bright of me."

"No it wasn't."

"Ah well. What can ya do?"

"I'm not sure what _you _can do but I'm leaving. Bye." The gold mech turned to go.

"Sunstreaker," Sideswipe called, his voice pinched with a girly whine.

"_Bye."_

"Alright, fine then. Go ahead and flee for _your_ life. I guess I'll just stay here to face my doom."

Sunstreaker gave him one of those rare smiles. "I'll be back to collect your pieces. Maybe make a wall mural out of them."

"You'd better or I'll be pissed."

"Oh," he stopped. "By the way. I'm glad you're ok." The way he said it wasn't anything special. It was just an offhand comment made as he made his leave, but it left Sideswipe grinning like an idiot. Sideswipe knew well enough how concerned his brother probably had been over him. The gold mech just didn't like making a show of his brotherly love. It was a Sunstreaker thing.

Sideswipe would take what he could get out of his sibling.

As Sideswipe watched him leave he caught something strange out of the corner of his optic. It almost appeared as if there was a fissure running down his brother's back.

"Hey, Sunny. What's-" he stopped realizing it was too late to ask as his brother had left.

The large med bay felt empty again. He was by himself.

Actually, it was kind of strange that he was by himself.

He felt sort of lonely actually.

"Was I really the only one damaged? How in the pit did I get beaten up so bad when no one else did?"

He was aware of the fact that he was one of the better fighters stationed on Earth. So how on Earth did he get thrashed like a greenhorn while nobody else was even scratched? Come on. If _he_ had gotten hurt at least Ironhide should've been in the med bay too. The Old timer had a habit of using himself as a metaphorical meat shield to protect the other Autobots.

It was getting frustrating. He wanted to know what happened. No matter how much he wracked his brain for some sort of memory he came up with nothing. Whatever he cracked his head against apparently knocked the memories right out of him. All his memories except …

"_Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over."_

He went rigid as that thought came and went. It had come out of the blue and disappeared just as quickly. Lyrics were hanging on the edge of his mind, so close but just out of his reach.

Before he could contemplate the matter further Ratchet screeched to a halt at the medical bay's entrance.

The second Ratchet was in his sight, Sideswipe knew something was off in the force.

Ratchet's optics locked on Sideswipe with, and Sideswipe noted how strange this expression was, absolute terror on his face. The panic evaporated as soon as he saw that Sideswipe was in all actuality fine (well as fine as he could possibly be in his situation) and a look a shear relief appeared on his face instead.

For a moment the medic didn't look like he knew what to do. "Your spark monitor flat lined," he stated evenly.

"Oh, well," Sideswipe trailed off, also not sure what to say, and held up the wire as an explanation.

Irritation made itself evident on Ratchet's face but that look quickly withered. It was like he simply didn't have the energy to be mad.

Ratchet_ always_ had the energy to be mad. Something was wrong.

"You know what that wire does. Why did you pull it out?" Again his voice was bland, missing a certain something. Sideswipe wasn't sure just what though.

"I wasn't paying attention." Sideswipe dropped the wire and absentmindedly scratched his unprotected chest.

"Sideswipe." Ratchet took a step forward but hesitated.

Something was wrong. Something was wrong with Ratchet. What was wrong with Ratchet?

Ratchet had an ambiguous look on his face which was making it difficult for Sideswipe to determine whether or not the medic was pissed at him.

The look on Ratchet's face softened and he apprehensively walked over to Sideswipe's berth.

Something was wrong. Something was missing in the medic's voice and demeanor. What was gone?

There was an awkward moment of complete silence before Ratchet did something odd.

He slowly sat down on the edge of the berth, his hands together resting between his knees.

Sideswipe was freaked, completely freaked out. What was this? He tried to remain calm though. Medics were known to be able to smell fear.

"Sideswipe." Ratchet repeated.

Against better judgment Sideswipe plowed ahead. "Yes?"

"Are you feeling alright?"

That was an odd question but he answered anyway. "Uh, no actually. Everything hurts and I can't feel my left leg."

"Your leg will regain feeling eventually. I have to connect some wires." He almost sounded relieved by the task ahead of him. Like repairing Sideswipe's leg would be an excuse from actually talking. So he stood and pulled the blue tarp away from Sideswipe's knee.

Sideswipe almost gagged. From his knee to his ankle joint, the armor and dermal plating had been stripped away. Only the most basic skeletal components, wires, and synthetic muscle pistons were left. And the muscle pistons were mostly detached and fanned out on the berth like spaghetti strands.

"Ya know there's no rush on the whole feeling my leg thing."

Ratchet didn't say anything and began the slow process of soldering wires together.

There was silence. A horrible unending silence. It was far from the usual loud verbal abuse and rough treatment but, as strange as it sounded, that spiel was his comfort zone. Not this-

Whatever it was.

He wanted to break the silence. He had to break the silence.

But he didn't.

'_Am I going to be in trouble?'_ That was the first thing that came to mind. Maybe he had done something so incredibly stupid, Ratchet simply was too angry for words. Perhaps this was the silent treatment.

But he didn't ask. Ratchet kept on welding.

It was like that for the next 24 minutes and 52 seconds.

Ratchet stood and replaced the tarp of Sideswipes leg. Sideswipe stared at him searching for some kind of answer in the medic's face.

Ratchet looked unsure, strained. He opened his mouth as if to say something but hesitated.

"I'll let those components cool before I reattach the Soleus pistons."

Sideswipe didn't say anything. He was too confused.

"Sideswipe if you…" Ratchet stopped. Instead he rested his hand on Sideswipe shoulder gently. He let it sit there for a brief moment. "I'll be back later. Don't pull on anymore wires."

And with that he left.

And Sideswipe just stared after him thunderstruck. So much so that it never occurred to him to ask Ratchet what had happened to him. He never asked why he was in the medbay.

If it had their Doctor acting like that, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.


	3. Chapter 4

It had been two days since his waking and the silence of the med bay was deafening.

Sideswipe wasn't used to feeling so isolated.

He was a mech that wheedled himself in to the heart of most conversations. He was always with someone whether it was playing Nintendo with Bluestreak or cards with Brawn. Even if he wasn't with his Autobot comrades he was always with his brother.

Speaking of Sunstreaker, he technically _was_ in the med bay with Sideswipe though not for the same reason. He had been dropping by as much as he could over the last couple of days and would stay with his confined brother as long as he was able. It was nice to have the company since most everyone else Sideswipe knew was avoiding him like a leper.

This was odd.

Because even though Sideswipe was on the bad side of several mechs he still had friends. He was charismatic and funny and that drew people to him. Unlike his socially awkward brother he knew how to communicate with people and got along well with some mechs you wouldn't expect. Like Skyfire. Sideswipe found he was pretty attached to the big mech after having to dig him out of the arctic (by himself mind you. Fat lot of help Wheeljack was) and after Skyfire had saved him a trip to Ratchet when Megatron threw him like a fast pitch.

But Skyfire didn't visit him. Neither did Bluestreak, or Ironhide, or Hound or anyone else really. Usually at least one person came to see him when he had an extended vacation to Ratchet's Lair.

It was just Sunstreaker.

At the moment though his company was out like a light. Sunstreaker was slumped sideways in a chair so he was curled up against one arm his legs dangling over the edge of the other. He looked uncharacteristically peaceful.

Sideswipe smiled. His brother looked his best when he was like this but he wasn't going to tell him any time soon. He'd get his face beaten in for implying that Sunstreaker didn't _always_ look his best.

Sunstreaker rolled and cuddled into the chair's back, his own back visible from Sideswipe's point of view.

The fissure Sideswipe had thought been going down his brother's back wasn't a fissure at all he had found out. It was slightly blackened armor, charred looking almost. Like a burn which was odd because Sunstreaker's armor was usually resistant to heat. And it appeared Sunstreaker wasn't even aware of it which was even stranger.

He'd tell him later.

For now it wasn't like he was doing anything productive. He decided to recharge to help the time go faster. You healed more in that state then when awake anyways

000000000000

When Sideswipe woke back up Sunstreaker was gone, Ratchet had apparently done more repairs on his leg (some mechanical tendons and synthetic muscle pistons were reattached to the skeletal frame) and he finally had a visitor other than his brother or his freakishly quiet medic.

It just wasn't anyone he had been expecting.

"Skids," Sideswipe started slowly. "Why are you here?"

"That's an excellent question, Sideswipe. Why are any of us here? What is our purpose in this vast universe? Is there some point or reason for our creation or did we all come into existence through random chance?"

"…what? I mean why are _you_ in the med bay?"

"Oh! I came to check up on you."

… "Whyyy?" Sideswipe drew out the word suspiciously.

He never talked to Skids. He forgot Skids existed most of the time actually. The mech was such a wallflower though. Could you blame him?

A brief unidentifiably look flashed across Skids' optics but it was almost gone as soon as it came.

Barely a second had passed before he answered, "Oh, I was just wondering if you felt like talking. It must be pretty boring in the med bay. Especially since everyone has been pretty busy lately."

"So that's what's up. I was beginning to think that my not showering in like a week was keeping people away." It was a lame crack at humor, and Skids weak chuckle didn't make him feel that much better.

Sideswipe was still a bit suspect of the whole thing. Then again, though Skids sudden interest in him was a little odd, it wasn't like anyone else was checking in on him. That realization made him feel a little bubble of appreciation rise from his spark.

Or maybe, since he was still so banged up, something in his chest was springing a leak. He hoped not. He really didn't want to have to call Ratchet in. The medic was still freaking him out with his docile, worn attitude.

"How've you been holding up?" Skids asked.

"Alright. It's pretty dull in here. My company has been sort of limited," Sideswipe responded evenly.

Skids smiled weakly. "Yeah. Well while you've been out we've had our hands full. It's been pretty hectic. I'm sure more mechs will com when they have a chance."

"No worries." Sideswipe absentmindedly poked at a weld mark where the big gash on his arm had been. "It hasn't been all that bad. I haven't been completely alone but it's still sort of weird. I mean usually at least Bluestreak would be chattering my audio off by now."

"Who's dropped by?" Skids asked inquisitively.

"Besides the obvious, First Aid came in once." Instead of sounding pleased at the company a sour look planted itself on Sideswipe's face. Unfortunately he was starting to make the association between First Aid and the ubercharged energy drink from hell they had him on instead of energon since the medic in training was the one who brought it in.

"I see," Skids said in a sort of amiable professional way. Like a shrink or something.

Waaaait a minute. Hold the phone.

Just what was going on here?

Was Skids playing _psychiatrist_ with him?

What the frak was going on?

Sideswipe fell a little quiet. This prompted Skid's to encourage him to speak a little. "How have your sessions with Ratchet been?"

Sideswipe gave him an overly bland look.

"You know how it is when you're talking to person that has, like, a horrible growth on their face or something? And the entire your time you're going, 'Don't look. Don't look. Don't look.' But then you end up looking. And then they catch you looking and give you this really dirty look?" Sideswipe started.

Skids nodded unsurely.

"That's how Ratchet's been acting around me."

"He's been under a lot of stress. You really scared him you know."

"That's what I've been told," Sideswipe suddenly didn't feel like sharing more than he had to.

Skid's smiled lightly.

"Is there anything that you would like to talk about?" Skids looked into Sideswipe's optics, a searching expression on his face.

Sideswipe scrutinized him. Whatever motive Skids had for being here, whether he had been ordered to come or simply came out of curiosity he seemed as though he legitimately wanted to know how Sideswipe was doing. And that was a heck of a lot more than any one else was doing.

Also this was a good opportunity to find out what happened. Sideswipe was a master of twisting words, and manipulating outcomes. It probably wouldn't be that hard to get Skids to tell him what had landed him in the Medbay or had gotten him so injured. Which would be especially helpful since his brother didn't seem to know and all of the medics had practically taken oaths of silence around him.

So he opened his mouth ready to turn on some of that famous Lamborghini charm, but something happened and the words were caught in his vocalizer.

He completely froze up. Everything was shut out. The medbay began to evaporate into curling wisps of smoke.

And suddenly he was in a nightmare.

_Thick, smoldering, choking smoke was everywhere. It blocked out the afternoon sky the only thing he could see. The Sun was a white plate beyond the haze of gray, even its light overcome by the acrid fumes._

_He was near limited to sounds. The crackling of his own burnt armor registered in his audios along with splintering wood, scorched stone and the snapping of glass in the far off distance._

_There was burning._

_There was freezing._

_There was calming music. _

_Much too calming for the carnage and destruction that permeated everything else around him._

_'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine  
And nobody ever came..."_

_His spark burned._

"Sideswipe? Sideswipe!"

His hand shot up to his chest plate.

It took a moment for the words to register as they passed through the fog in his central processor. The odd visions dissipated quickly far out of Sideswipe's reach, almost as if they had never been there.

Suddenly his focus snapped back to the medbay. Skids was in front of him and concern was evident on his face. You could see it in the way his brows were knit and in the subtle downward tilt of his mouth. Sideswipe's momentary emotional lockdown probably had alarmed him.

It had happened so fast.

"Uh," Sideswipe fumbled for something to say. "Were we talking about something important?"

Skid's just _looked_ at him. It was an expression of concern, bewilderment and fear and it was freaking Sideswipe out something fierce.

He had just _shut down_ for no reason. That probably would've scared anyone. But it was still weird having a mech that he had basically never spoken to before fret over him with such anxiety.

"No, it's alright." Skids sounded slightly strained. "Ratchet would have my head if he thought I was wearing you out. You just rest and get some recharge time in. I have to go talk to Prime about something now anyway."

"Uh sure. Have fun with that," Sideswipe responded tenuously.

Skids left and he was alone again. Nothing to keep him company except for his thoughts.

What had happened? It was like his body and mind had revolted against them. He had an opportunity to find out what had happened and he completely locked up.

It was like some deep subconscious part of himself overwhelmed his desire to know with an even greater desire to remain ignorant to what had happened.

He almost took Skids' advice and drifted into recharge. However as his mind wandered those fragmented horrific thoughts would strike at his mind like a rattlesnake. Quick enough to fill him with unease but then they'd be gone before he could truly get a grasp on them.

He decided that he'd rather stay in reality than follow those thoughts.

000000000000

"Ironhide doesn't have a southern accent. Southerners have an Ironhide accent."

"Ratchet is the reason Waldo is hiding."

"If Prowl has five dollars, and you have five dollars, Prowl has more money then you."

"Red Alert doesn't wear a watch; He decides what time it is."

"Jazz doesn't blink. Those are just short bursts of sleep."

"Jazz doesn't blink you idiot. We don't even know if he has optics."

"Of course he has optics, dummy. How else would he see?"

"I dunno. Maybe with _his visor_?" Sunstreaker stated as if it was the most obvious thing.

"Nah." Sideswipe waved him off with his right arm, red guard plate freshly reattached. "Ten bucks says he wears it just to look cool."

"Ten bucks says he wears it just to piss the rest of us off."

"I could actually see him doing that," Sideswipe said thoughtfully.

"Just to keep us guessing," his twin agreed.

"Seriously. Last I checked the list there were 32 guesses on why he wears the damn thing."

"Actually 33," Sunstreaker corrected. "Bumblebee added one two weeks ago."

"Really? What?"

"Cyclops laser beams. The visor keeps Jazz from frying our afts."

"Ha! That's genius! I never would have thought of that! Man, it would be so cool if Jazz could really do that." Maniacal glee glittered in Sideswipe's optics.

"It beats Jazz being blind. I don't think they'd let him be a special ops if that were the case."

"You never know. He could have some awesome sensory network thing that's _like_ seeing."

"No."

"I'm just throwing out ideas."

"It was a dumb idea."

"You don't have to be so mean about it," Sideswipe sighed.

"I'm not being mean. I'm being honest," Sunstreaker responded flatly.

Sudennly Sideswipe's optics lit up again. "What if he's doing it to cover his optics? What if he's like, some ex Decepticon spy that saw the light and decided to be an Autobot. And he doesn't want to get his optics changed from red to blue so as to have constant reminder of his past."

"…"

"Or maybe not."

Sunstreaker just shook his head.

This is what they had been doing for the last half hour.

The day before, after that weird visit with Skids, First Aid had shown up to sand down some of his weld marks and to bring him a nasty cocktail of concentrated energon, and other fuels to help Sideswipe build his strength. His injuries had been disrupting all of his charging units and his circulatory system. So they had to make sure he was getting an adequate amount of energy.

Soon after that equally odd meeting (First Aid hadn't really talked to him either. At first glance you would think it was because he was intimidated by Sideswipe, but the Lamborghini new better) Ratchet had showed up to do more work on his leg and his arm.

Sideswipe had tried breaking the ice, and a few times it looked like Ratchet would take the bait. But just as quickly as he got riled up the medic would just fizzle out and go back to silence.

So Sideswipe stopped trying.

After a fretful recharge filled with terrible bits and pieces of memories too elusive to be filed away, Sideswipe woke to more of First Aid's supercharged brew of horror.

When he finished muscling down the bright, sickly, ale colored liquid he was left to count tiles on the ceiling for an hour before his brother finally came to save him from the monotony that was his existence as of late.

It had been three days since he woke up and he was _still in_ the medical ward which was just unheard of. Usually the combination of him being a valuable asset on the battlefield and Ratchet's desire to simply get him away had Sideswipe up and running in mere hours. His repairs were going so painstakingly slow though. At least he didn't have a cobweb of wires hanging over him anymore but he still couldn't use his leg well and things ached periodically.

Particularly his chest. Every once in a while there'd be a stab of pain but it would be gone as quickly as it came.

Sideswipe realized that he hadn't said anything in several minutes and looked at his brother. Sunstreaker's lip components were pursed but he simply waited for his twin.

He relaxed his shoulders carefully. He hadn't even been aware that he had tensed himself up. Sunstreaker probably noticed but he made no effort to comment on Sideswipe's bizarre behavior.

Sideswipe was always Bizarre in Sunstreaker's optics anyway.

"Hey, " Sideswipe finally broke the silence. "When do you think Ratchet will let me leave the medical bay?" he asked softly.

"When you can walk out of here without limping like Quasimodo. That's my guess." Sunstreaker shrugged.

"Well if he'd just finish fixing my leg properly then I'd gladly get out of his hair." He gesticulated to the tarp covered appendage.

"He doesn't have hair."

"Shut up. It's an expression. These excruciatingly long _careful _repairs have been dragging on forever. I miss meatball surgery."

"Meatball surgery?" Sunstreaker actually sounded vaguely horrified.

"Don't you ever watch MASH? Ratchet has it on in here _all_ the time. Never mind. Point is Ratchet's been particularly slow in getting me up to a hundred percent. Usually he slaps me together and kicks me out as soon as he physically can. And boy do his kicks hurt."

"He's dragging out your repairs slower than usual because he's worried that your spark won't be able to take anything too drastic," Sunstreaker answered off handedly.

"He's… what?" That jolted Sideswipe's processer into gear. He _had _been having weird chest pains. "What's wrong with my spark?"

A brief flash in Sunstreaker's optics made it evident that he had just made a mistake but the expression quickly went back to brotherly exasperation. "Nothing now."

"Dude, don't kid about something like this. What is wrong with my spark?" Sideswipe sat up a little straighter.

If you lost an arm you could get a new one. If your internal transitional adapters got fried they could be replaced. After all, very few mechs were made with the same things they had been when first constructed. It was Theseus' paradox. Is an object that had every part of it replaced the same object?

Yet In the Cybertronian anatomy there were few things that could absolutely not be replaced. The spark was one of them.

He looked at his brother expectantly. It wasn't like Sunstreaker to keep things from him.

Sunstreaker's face was clear of emotion. "Like I said, nothing is wrong with you now. Besides I don't even know what happened. Apparently whatever happened happened when you got yourself fragged. Other than that nobody told me anything."

"Huh. You mean you didn't threaten bodily harm upon First Aid if he didn't tell you?"

Sunstreaker shrugged. "I thought about it. But you're fine now. That's all that matters."

"You're not curious at all?" Sideswipe raised an eye ridge.

"I don't have the same burning desire to know everything like you do," he pointed out.

Sideswipe huffed and crossed his arms in annoyance despite the dull hurt in his arms. "I thought you were going to help me kick the ass of the person who gave me this all paid trip to the medical ward."

"We _will,_" Sunstreaker spat caustically. "But there's no point until you're completely better. And I honestly can't promise that I wouldn't just do it myself if I knew what happened."

"Ahah! so the truth comes out," Sideswipe smirked slyly. "You're a big softie."

"Shut up," Sunstreaker snapped with watered down venom in his voice. "Maybe I _should_ leave you behind seeing how well you handled whatever it was the first time."

"Low blow, Bro. Low blow," Sideswipe winced. "That's not fair. Maybe I fought off a whole army valiantly."

"I highly doubt it," Sunstreaker said sounding not all that impressed.

"Hey, you never know!" Sideswipe puffed out his chest heroically then bent over as pain shot through his torso. "Ouch. Maybe reinforcements wouldn't hurt this time. Unless they didn't work last time. But since no one else is in the freaking medical bay I take it I was probably by myself."

Sunstreaker just rolled his optics at his brother's expense.

Sideswipe shot a glare his way but then cheerily perked up as an idea struck his thoughts. "You know what we should do? We should convince Jazz to get optic lasers and he could help us."

So they spent the rest of their time together trying to figure out which X-men powers would suite their Autobot comrades. (Windcharger would totally be Magneto. Smokescreen could be Gambit.)

However the slight paranoid itching at the back of Sideswipe's mind didn't leave him.

He wanted to know what had happened to him.

0000000000000

Sometime after Sunstreaker left Sideswipe acted.

And so he limped.

It was an awkward, arduous task, partly because one of his legs was fragged beyond belief, and partly because he had to roll his stupid vitals monitoring machine along with him. The last thing he wanted was a swarm of medics descending upon him if heaven forbid, the thing flat lined again.

It was the first time he had walked in ten days and he could feel it. Everything was stiff and sore and if he wasn't careful about the placement of his steps when he used his left leg white, hot, crippling pain would shoot through his nervous system.

It was a good thing that he had a high tolerance for pain. A lesser mech would be in fetal position on the floor by now.

Then again a smarter mech would not risk exacerbating his injuries over something so stupid.

But Sunstreaker had been right. Sideswipe did have an obnoxious desire to know what had happened. Everything was a blank. If the large crack in his helm (which finally was welded shut) had anything to do with it there was a chance the memory would never come back.

So he decided to find out himself.

He had to use his monitoring system as a crutch for most of the trip. He awkwardly hopped on one leg for the rest of it.

He didn't have to go very far. Just to the other side of the med bay. Unfortunately the medical wing was pretty large so it wasn't exactly a cake walk.

Never the less, several aching minutes later he made his way to the medical computer.

Sideswipe rapped his knuckles against its screen.

"Teletraan? Hey, Teletraan."

There was a buzz signifying that he was being scanned. "Physical Identification complete: Good evening Autobot Sideswipe."

"Yeah, whatever. Hey I need to access my medical file."

"Were self diagnostics inadequate?" Teletraan's dry voice queried.

"They're not working as well as they should." Sideswipe screwed up his face when he recalled first taking inventory of his injuries. It had not been pretty but all of that had been was the internal that he was curious about. "Can I have my file or is it on lockdown?"

"The private records of Autobot Sideswipe are available to the Autobot Sideswipe, " Teletraan answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Awesome." Sideswipe grinned, ignoring the AI's snark.

"As soon as you submit your authorization code for identity verification," the computer requested.

"Why? You did the scan thing. You know it's me."

"A precaution. Installed by Red Alert after the Optimus Prime vs. Optimus Prime incident."

Oh right. Boy had that been weird.

So Sideswipe went ahead and typed in the code. He was ignoring the dull pain lancing through his bad leg despite having all his weight shifted off of it. When he was done he attached a wire from his arm to a port in the wall.

"Identity confirmed. Files authorized and loading." Teletraan fell silent other than the whirs and clicks of his processor. In less than a clik the documents were uploaded to the red warrior.

"Thanks, Teletraan." Sideswipe activated the file, and a hologram projecting the records hovered above his arm.

"Let's see here. Cerebral bleed, well that explains the headache. Lacerations of the back, arms and sides, yada yada, partial severing of the left leg, severe burns on the breast plate, and left arm. Ow, reading all of these is making me hurt all over again. What else, severe depletion of energon flow in the body, and nonbat… Non-battle related injury?" That looked out of place. However when he tried activating the link a notice came up stating that that part of the record was a separate file. "Teletraan. Access the link attachment to the non-battle related injury for more info."

The computer whirred again and complied. A second file came up on the projection.

It was short. "Severe atrophy of the spark resulted from a combination of severe injuries and from non battle injury related causes. Spark had gone red before stabilization back to white was possible. Well hell."

Sideswipe had been in the medical bay enough to know how a Cybertronian body was supposed to function. A spark going red was basically a death sentence. It meant a burn out was about to happen which would be followed by a quiet collapse of the spark.

Had he been that close to dying?

_The burning. It was tearing at him in waves through his body. He wanted to cry. He wanted to-_

Sideswipe's hand snapped up to his chest and the vague memory(?) dissipated.

"Do you need anything else Autobot Sideswipe?" Teletraan asked disinterested.

"Nah. That's goo-"

"What are you doing?"

Sideswipe dang near jumped out of his dermal plating. The sudden movement caused the wire in his arm to snap out of the wall and pain speared through his leg. There was a darkly comical moment of Sideswipe flailing to find a way to stand that didn't cause excruciating pain to his entire person while the newcomer simply watched mildly annoyed.

"Sunstreaker! What the hell? I thought you left," Sideswipe deactivated the holo-file and opted to drop himself roughly on the ground. The impact hurt a tad but it was better than his leg feeling like it was going to disintegrate. He rubbed his tender leg and wondered when his brother became a ninja.

That was Mirage's job.

"I figured you were going to do something dumb. Lo and Behold I was right. What are you doing?" the words came out more aggravated that time.

"Just checking some of my private medical files. Is that such a crime?" Sideswipe spat accusatorily.

"Depends." Sunstreaker narrowed his optics. "Why?"

"Boredom, curiosity," Sideswipe tried circumnavigating the reason.

It's hard getting things past your twin though. "Chest pain?"

That rattled Sideswipe. He hadn't mentioned anything about that. "How did you know?"

Sunstreaker gave him one of those 'Are-you-that-stupid?' looks, and it did indeed make Sideswipe feel a bit dumb. "I'm your twin."

Right. That sort of made sense. They both had a habit of knowing odd things about each other simply from gut feelings and instinct. Also Sunstreaker probably picked up on Sideswipe's subtler behaviors. Things as insignificant as a wince or unconscious grab for chest plate when things felt particularly tight around his spark would speak volumes to his brother.

"I usually wouldn't suggest this," Sunstreaker began, "but shouldn't you go ask a medic about that?"

That sent Sideswipe into a tizzy. "Don't tell Ratchet! I'll be confined to the sickbay and I'll never get out."

"Why would I tell Ratchet?" Sunstreaker seemed legitimately bewildered.

"Because you're my brother and we're sick bastards to each other on a general basis," Sideswipe offered.

"Point taken but I'd get caught in the crossfire somehow. And without you wreaking havoc on the base lately I've been able to stay under the radar."

"Good for you." Sideswipe paused. "Hey, while you're here mind being my crutch? I need to get back to my berth before Ratchet gets back. He's been pretty spacey lately but I think it's the calm before the storm. He's probably like a super volcano waiting to blow. He has to be. He hasn't been able to vent all of his pent up rage things lately and I don't want to set him off."

"You got here yourself. You can get back," was Sunstreaker's unsympathetic response as he turned and left.

"You suck," Sideswipe spat.

"Bye."

Sideswipe lazily flipped his brother off but then he realized something.

The weird mark on his brother's back was gone.

Perhaps it was nothing after all.

He hobbled back to his berth not feeling any closer to an answer then he had been before.


	4. Chapter 5

"_Hey Bumblebee. What exactly happens when your spark atrophies?" The human asked. "I mean, I heard you guys use the phrase before but I never really knew what it meant."_

_Bumblebee frowned and contemplated an answer for his young friend. "I guess it would kind of be like a heart attack." He paused. "That's not the best description though."_

"_What do you mean?" the teen asked curiously._

"_Well, with you humans you have a heart right? Ratchet told me that it's pretty important."_

"_Yeah. Just a bit."_

"_Well the human heart can only beat a certain amount of times in a human's lifespan before it runs out of energy and stops right?"_

"_I guess. That's about right."_

"_Well our sparks are basically spheres of compressed energy. Instead of pumping blood through our bodies they pulse energy through our systems. Sparks are finite though. They only have so much energy they can give before they run out and fade away completely."_

"_Wow, huh. That's…really odd. I never really thought about you guys dying of old age before."_

"_It takes a really, really long time." _

"_So what about the atrophy? What happens when it does that?"_

"_Ratchet is way better at explaining Cybertronian physiology." Bee scratched the back of his head, searching for his words. "Oh! This is how they explained back in training. The spark is like a star."_

"_A star?"_

"_The younger the spark is the bluer or whiter it is. As the spark ages it gets redder and colder since it has less energy to expend. The spark even becomes a bit bigger since the energy isn't as concentrated. " His face turned grim. "When a spark atrophies that means that some kind of trauma is causing it to lose energy at an extremely scary rate and fade prematurely."_

"_Whoa."_

"_Usually in minor cases, the spark is able to regenerate the majority of the lost energy. Sometimes though the spark loses so much energy that it goes red and then collapses completely."_

_A pause. "And that's what happened to Sideswipe? His spark went red."_

"_Yeah."_

"_But his spark didn't collapse. He's ok now, right?"_

"_Spike, what happened to him just __**doesn't **__happen, at least not often. For us a red spark is like a death sentence. The fact that he not only survived but is almost completely recovered is incredible. Ratchet said his lifespan was probably shortened but given what happened that's not the bad."_

0000000000000

Sideswipe knew it would only be a matter of time before someone else ended up in the medical bay.

He just wasn't expecting_ this_.

It had been approximately five days since he woke up. His welding scars were all but gone and his leg only needed a few more tweaks before he would be deemed fit for combat. He couldn't wait. He had one more session with Ratchet so the medic could attach the remainder of his shin plate. After that, if all was well and everything was sound, he'd be released that very day.

This piece of knowledge had improved his mood greatly. Also, since his circulatory system was back to normal, he no longer had to drink First Aid's ubercharged brew from hell. He could enjoy a simple high grade and not worry about dangerously low energy levels. Life was grand.

So he was sitting on the edge of his medical berth, sipping high grade as he idly kicked his newly repaired legs.

That's when all hell broke loose.

The doors of the med bay slammed open and the medical team swarmed in. Ratchet was barking orders, First Aid and Perceptor were clearing medical berths for use and that's when Sideswipe noticed that Ironhide and Silverbolt, both looking worse for wear mind you, were carrying in a mech.

From the army green armor Sideswipe instantly recognized the bot as Hound. The scout looked like he had _almost_ been ripped apart. His right arm was completely gone like it had been burnt off by the shoulder. The jagged edges of the wound were blackened and still sizzling. Every once in a while you'd hear a wire pop from being overloaded by heat and the crumbling of burnt, brittle armor as it fell away. There was no bleeding though. The wound most likely had been thoroughly cauterized by whatever caused it.

Hound was awake and shaking like leaf. Sideswipe recognized that as being a symptom of shock.

They set him down gently on a berth and tried getting a closer look at the injury but Hound was gripping at the stump where his arm used to be as if letting go would cause him to bleed out. He looked both disconnected and absolutely terrified at the same time.

Sideswipe tended to forget that not all mechs were used to getting their limbs ripped off. Even if it wasn't as life threatening an injury to a Cybertronian as it would be to a human it was still relatively traumatic and it hurt like a mother.

But the look on Hound's face wasn't one of a mech in distress because of pain.

It was of a mech who had just stared Death in the face and somehow survived to tell about it. The shock on his face wasn't the "Oh-primus-flippen-hell-I'm-gonna-pass-out-from-pain" shock. It was the "Vector-Sigma-how-am-I-still-alive-I-almost-slagging-_died_" shock.

Then the others filed in as well.

Brawn looked like he got dragged through a pit of something sharp. His armor was scratched up and dinged like nobody's business. Trailbreaker's hands and forearms looked like he dunked them into boiling acid. He was burned and shredded to just below his elbows and the paint from the affected area was simply _gone_. Trailbreaker's force fields usually prevented things like that from happening.

Maybe they hadn't worked.

Mirage was missing a shoulder guard but other than that and some scuff marks he didn't look to bad. The aerialbot's on the other hand had blaster pocks in their armor and Air Raid in particular was not happy about that.

Then Prime walked in.

He still managed to look imposing and dignified but he was easily the most worked over after Hound. He wasn't missing any limbs but he was still _smoking_ in some places. His windshields were cracked and his armor was burned and damaged all over.

Optimus Prime, the great leader of the Autobots, dropped his massive rifle to the ground with a thud, let himself sag against the wall into a sit, let his head drop into his hands and let out a long sigh.

That was the most jarring thing of all.

Sideswipe stared thunderstruck at the sudden flurry of medics, and injured around him. He had wanted company but not like this.

This wasn't normal. Yes there was always a sense of urgency, especially amongst the medics, whenever injured came in after a battle, but the utter silence and grimness was foreign.

Usually in this case, unless it was really bad, humor would be used to lighten the situation.

But there were no bad jokes about needing a hand from Hound. There was no running banter between Brawn and Ironhide over how awesome each other's burned and scrapped to hell paintjobs were.

The badly injured were being cared for by the medics. The lesser damaged were sitting quietly doing their own minor repairs as they waited in the queue to be seen. Nobody was in a life threatening condition. Not even Hound. Sideswipe could tell that much from having been under Ratchet's care so many times.

So what was up with the morbidity choking the room?

Sideswipe just watched from the side trying to figure it all out.

There was an alien somberness in the room laced by the barest hint of…of what? Relief?

Like everyone was just glad to be alive? Like everyone was trying to absorb what it was they just survived?

No way. Battles with Decepticons were not _like_ that. Not anymore. Not since they left Cybertron. Their ongoing fight with the Decepticons had devolved into something of a chore so long ago that it was barely that big of a deal anymore. You just punched in your card and shot at some fraggers as they tried to shoot you back. Rinse and repeat.

Why was everyone acting this way?

Why was Prime sitting against the wall of the medical bay looking like Atlas being crushed under the world?

What happened?

Why was he asking _that_ question so much lately?

_**Dunno. **_A little voice in his head answered. _**Look at the bright side. At least it's not you they're fussing over now right?**_

Sideswipe nodded stiffly in agreement then paused when he realized he was essentially answering himself.

Huh.

Ah well. Everyone talked to themselves at some point.

The only comforting thing about the whole situation was the fact that Ratchet's fiery temper and control were back for the first time since Sideswipe's waking, and if you really thought about it that was sort of messed up.

"Wheeljack! Quit dragging you damn heels and help me remove the corroded metal from Hound's arm socket!"

"But Trailbreaker's-"

"Let First Aid handle it. Quit whining and haul your aft over **here**!" Ratchet barked. He then moved to Hound. "Hound, either move your hand or I'll rip it off and then I'll have to reattach _that _after I reattach your arm. Believe you me that would not make me a happy camper," he said darkly.

"O-okay. Sorry, Ratchet," Hound responded meekly, still somewhat shaken. Nevertheless, he complied and moved his hand which allowed Ratchet access to the charred stump.

Sideswipe found himself fixated on Hound's burns and he absently scratched at his newly repaired and polished chest plate. After awhile he realized that he was staring and forced himself to stop.

Instead for the next five minutes Sideswipe watched the commonplace act of soldiers getting repaired after a battle, decided that there was something too inherently bizarre about the whole thing and simply for the first time in five days got up and left.

No one noticed him leave.

000000000000000

The halls were empty. It was deceptively late, probably somewhere around 2 in the morning. Sideswipe had only been up since his schedule had been fragged up from his stay in the med bay. Only those in the medical wing and those on the graveyard shift would be awake.

He still had a slight limp from the wobble in his knee, and a couple of the armor plates on his shin were loose, but other than that he looked good as new. Sure Ratchet would hunt him down later to dot the metaphorical I's and cross the t's of his repairs but he felt well enough to socialize.

If you combined how long he had been in stasis with how long he had been awake and under repairs that equaled to about twelve days without seeing anyone but his brother, medics and Skids.

Medics and Skids didn't count.

Also whatever the heck that was in the med bay didn't count since no one actually _said_ anything to Sideswipe. No one even acknowledged him. They were too caught up in their…whatever that was.

Sideswipe stopped walking and took in the barren, brightly lit hallway.

It was really quiet.

Man that was not something he wanted to get used to. It just reminded him about how bored and lonely he had been in the med bay.

Should he shun his friends for shunning him? Skids said everyone had been too was busy to visit but _still._

He was a little miffed by the lack of love. Perhaps they deserved to be ignored.

Then again that might not be a great idea. If shunned Brawn might decide not to share any of that nifty blue high grade he figured out how to make. What did he call it? Right.

The Mind Eraser.

He could use some of that.

But Brawn was in the Med Bay.

With Hound.

That burn looked pretty bad.

He scratched at his chest.

_**You know, you can use malt vinegar and bicarbonate of soda to remove some burns.**_

Sideswipe gave an amused snort. "Pft. Yeah. Maybe the burns on a kitchen pot. Not the burns on Cybertronian armor."

His voice echoed in the empty hall.

Huh.

He kept walking.

Eventually he made his way to the barracks and found his way into his own room.

The first thing that hit him was the familiarity of the smell. Their room smelt like turtle wax, acrylic paint, gun oil, and mint julep (something they never quite figured out). All the same it was comforting.

Man it was good to be back. Medical berths were fundamentally uncomfortable things and he had been basically bolted to one for almost two weeks. It was nice to be back in his own room surrounded by his own clutter and not all the horrific little doodads and machines he had been wired to under Ratchet's care.

He kicked a pile of stuff out of his path and into Sunstreaker's more fastidious side of the room. He would get yelled at later no doubt but that bridge could be crossed when he got there. Still Sunstreaker wasn't in the room meaning he was probably on the night shift. So, instead of worrying about his more OCD sibling he simply crawled into the top bunk of their recharge berths and promptly was out like a light.

It was the most peaceful recharge he had in as long as he could remember. The familiarity of the room was comforting and it made him feel pleasantly at peace.

No smoke or oceans were washing over anything tonight.

0000000000000

Of course all good things come to an end.

"SIDESWIPE!"

Whump.

Sideswipe blinked owlishly.

The ceiling was a _lot_ farther away than he remembered it being.

Oh! He was on the floor. Well that explained things. When did the ceiling get violet optics?

"Oh," he began as the grip of recharge finally started to leave him. How long had he been out? His internal clock was telling him seven hours which meant it was like nine or something. That was an awfully long time. He was sort of surprised Sunstreaker let him sleep in _that_ late.

He sat up slowly and rubbed the back of his head. That kind of hurt. "Did I just fall out of my bunk?"

"Yes," Sunstreaker growled from above him.

"Oh. Ok. Good to know." He rolled back to his shoulders, place his hands flat on the floor and sprung up. The landing was a little wobbly but it was still better than where he was at a couple days ago. A couple days ago he could barely limp to the other side of the medical bay without excruciating pain.

Ratchet worked wonders sometimes.

"So how are you this bright and glorious day?" Sideswipe asked in his most annoyingly happy voice.

Sunstreaker glowered. "Get your crap off of my side of the room."

Sideswipe blinked then looked to the scattered pile of junk he had kicked across the floor earlier. "I knew that was gonna be the first thing you brought up."

The pile consisted of old magazines, some broken video tapes, several spare parts for guns and a really pretty black metal, double edged fixed blade. That he plucked from the pile before sweeping the rest under their berths with the side of his foot. He gave his brother a cheeky grin as he flipped the knife expertly in his hand.

"You weren't actually cleared to leave the med bay," Sunstreaker borderline nagged. "Go find Ratchet before he kills you."

"He was occupied." Sideswipe held the tip of the knife and flipped it high into the air before catching the handle. "And if I stayed there any longer I think the medical bay was going to eat me. Ya know things have been pretty weird lately. A bunch of mechs ended up in there yesterday but it was I dunno, different. Serious I guess. Too serious. I had to get out of there."

Sideswipe didn't want to think about how tired and lost Prime looked sitting against the wall of the medical ward as his wounded soldiers were tended to around him.

"Huh. A bunch of injured mechs in the medical ward were being serious," Sunstreaker said monotonously.

"Trust me. It was weird. You'd have to be there." Sideswipe walked out of their room, flipping the knife as he went. "I couldn't stay there, Man. You know I get stir crazy when cooped up in one place for too long. I wasn't allowed to break anything, nobody but you came to see me, I've missed two new episodes of Thundercats, I haven't been in a fight in forever, and I swear if I find out that someone broke my high score on Donkey Kong while I was out I'm gonna have to break some faces."

"My god, Sideswipe. Stop talking before I choke you," he grouched as he followed his twin down the hall.

Sideswipe paused to give his brother a look. "I don't breath. What's that supposed to do?"

"The action would be comforting. For me that is. It'd be highly uncomfortable for you. Now go find Ratchet before I have to hear about it." Sunstreaker stalked off at the fork in the hallway.

"Sunstreaker," Sideswipe whined. He was ignored.

Next logical course of action when being ignored by your brother?

Break into song obviously. _"~__I touch you once I touch you twice  
I won't let go at any price  
I need you now like I needed you then  
You always said we'd meet again someday~"_

His brother merely flicked him off.

Sideswipe laughed and went on his merry way.

"_If you leave  
Oh if you leave  
Oh if you leave  
Don't look back  
Don't look back,"_ he sang loudly enough for his brother to hear him.

0000000000000000

The second Sideswipe walked through the door Ratchet grabbed him by an audio horn, dragged him across the room and all but threw him into a berth.

'_Yay! Angry Ratchet's back!'_ Sideswipe cheered in his mind.

"You do _not_ leave unless I say you can you obnoxious little fragger!" Ratchet spat.

Sideswipe grinned like an idiot. Yup. Ratchet was back. Whatever happened yesterday pulled him out of his weird funk.

"Will do, Ratchman!" He responded blithely. He could see the irritation flash in the medic's cerulean optics. This was how it was supposed to be. He acted annoying. Ratchet got mad. Sideswipe continued to be annoying, and then Ratchet would clock him over the head with whatever tool was closest.

Sideswipe never thought he'd be so excited to be hit!

…Boy that came out weird.

For a split second Ratchet looked like he was going to take a swing but at the last minute something happened. The anger seemed to collapse out of him and he deflated like a punctured balloon.

Sideswipe frowned. _'Damn it! So close to normal!'_

With that Ratchet grabbed his tools, tightened the loose shin guard, worked the kinks out of Sideswipe's knee and added the finishing touches to Sideswipe's repairs. When he completed the task he gave Sideswipe a good, hard look.

The medic looked oddly conflicted about something. Sideswipe opened his mouth to say something about it but he was cut off.

"I'll be back," Ratchet said resignedly. "I have to go speak with Prowl. Leave and I'll bolt you to the floor. You know I will."

"You did last March," Sideswipe said with a small smile.

Baby steps. They'd be back to projectiles and loud insults soon enough. Until then he'd take what he could get.

After Ratchet left Sideswipe hopped up to go look for his comrades.

He knew some of them would still be in the medical bay. Protocol usually had you under a twelve hour watch after getting a limb reattached (unless you were Sideswipe more often than not). They had to be around here some-

Aha!

He spotted Hound in the distance. Trailbreaker was still there as well on the berth next to Hound's. Both were awake and alert and appeared to be conversing about something.

"Hey, Hound, how are you feeling?" Sideswipe called earnestly. Hound was one of the mechs that you simply couldn't _not_ like. He actually wanted to know how he was. That and the slightly more vengeful side of Sideswipe wanted to make the two feel bad for not visiting him at _all_ while he was down. Best way to do that? By checking on_ their_ wellbeing.

It was working. They ducked their heads slightly with guilt.

"Sideswipe," Hound started unsurely before responding with a faint smile, "Oh. I'm fine. Ratchet reattached my arm not too long ago. Things are still a little… off though." He rolled his right shoulder experimentally and you could hear the jangle of loose components.

"Huh." Sideswipe looked at the repaired limb. "That's completely not fair. You know how long this leg thing of mine took to repair? Two weeks. How wrong is that? I could've sworn Ratchet was on a mission to break his previous limb attaching record. 28 minutes to get an arm back on after Starscream wrenched it off of me. We have some serious catching up to do."

He was received by a weak laugh.

Sideswipe pulled up a chair, swung it around backwards and sat.

"So." He crossed his arms on the back and leaned his chin against them. "How about you, Trailbreaker?"

"Better off than Hound." He held his arms up. There were still some weld scars and the paint was still gone but at least it didn't look like he tried washing his hands in lava any more.

"That's good."

"Well what about you?" Hound asked seemingly glad at Sideswipe's recovery. "It's good to see you up and running again. You had us all pretty scared for a while."

"So I've heard," Sideswipe answered brightly. "I still have some pretty big blank spots. I guess I had hit my head pretty hard. Hopefully they'll fill themselves in."

Hound and Trailbreaker shared an uneasy look.

"You don't," Trailbreaker started hesitantly, "Remember what happened?"

"Nope." Sideswipe shrugged. "Do you?"

Trailbreaker paused. "To you?"

Sideswipe nodded to clarify things.

Trailbreaker's expression turned to one of shame but he hurriedly said, "No. I don't."

Sideswipe didn't buy it, but there were other more roundabout ways of getting an answer. "Well there you go. And I decided I probably don't want to know anyways. It'll come back to me eventually. But really what I want to know now," he stretched his arms out over the back of the chair nonchalantly, "is what fragged _you_ guys over so badly?"

Hound and Trailbreaker froze up like two deer in the headlights and shared a petrified look. It was almost as if they were having an entire conversation with that one look, and it was sort of obnoxious because it left Sideswipe out of the loop.

He rather liked being kept in the loop.

This was partly why this last week had been so annoying.

"Seriously. I'm probably gonna have to fight whatever fragged you two over so I might as well know what I'm up against. Did Bell-Head build another death ray? He's made like six of those this year alone," Sideswipe snickered darkly.

Sideswipe still didn't know what hurt him. However given the evidence that was presented before him you could bet your bottom dollar that it was probably whatever burned Hound's arm off.

"We were responding to a distress call in Texas. Ya know Decepticon's were targeting an oil field and what not," Hound finally started slowly.

"Yeah?" Sideswipe encouraged him to continue.

"It was Ramjet's trine, a few constructicons… I think I saw Reflector and Ravage but I'm not sure."

"And?"

Hound paused, a dark look ghosting across his face. "It was going well actually," his voice was taking on a more haunted tone, "but then everything went to the pit when we were attacked by-

BLACKNESS

Sideswipe was about to ask Hound why he stopped talking on a cliffhanger when he realized he couldn't see.

"-id-ipe-" there was a voice tinny and distance. Several actually. They were yelling at him kind of. Some of it sounded mad. Most of it seemed concerned.

Slowly darkness became shadows. Shadows became shapes. Suddenly the shapes cleared and he could see Ratchet above him.

Whoa. Déjà vu.

One moment Ratchet would be screaming in a terrifyingly familiar, borderline hysterical tone at him and the next he would be using one of complete and utter rage at Hound and Trailbreaker, oh hey! They were still here! Only they were looking immensely guilty over something and pretty danged scared as well.

Man, what was going on?

Why was he on the floor again?

_**Primus. Get up and save your last shred of dignity. Geez.**_

"I ran out of that a while ago," Sideswipe grumbled.

Apparently he said that out loud because beneath the panic Sideswipe could see a spark of relief in Ratchet's optics. "Sideswipe? Primus, Sideswipe!"

"I'm fine, Ratchet. Chill. Ow," he said offhandedly. He started getting up but the second he managed to get to a sitting position something slugged him in the face with the force of a freight train and he ended up flat on his back again.

In hindsight that probably wasn't the proper response to give to your irascible, ninja of a medic when he was absolutely terrified about something.

His audios were ringing. It could have been from the clang of his helmet as it cracked against the floor or could have simply been from the impact of a fist to the face.

There were stars in his vision and he could make out the overly shiny forms of Trailbreaker and Hound as they hauled the medic off of him before Ratchet inflicted a more severe beat down.

Oh hey. Ratchet hit him.

Why had he wanted that earlier? Hits from Ratchet _slagging_ _hurt_.

_**Hi, I'm paper. Nice to meet you. I think Rock is fine the way it is, but scissors needs a nerf. It's too overpowered.**_

"Oh sssshut uuuup," he slurred. God, that voice was starting to get annoying.

The three were looking down at him again with worry and shock etched into their features. Ratchet in particular looked absolutely horrified by what he had done which was weird. Ratchet never usually felt bad about giving him a couple more scrapes and dents if it meant he'd be up and running in the long run.

Primus, why was everything so bright? And sparkly. Things weren't supposed to be sparkling.

There appeared to be some more panicked yelling from all three parties this time but he couldn't hear any of it thanks to the buzzing in his audios. Hound and Trailbreaker seemed to go back and forth between frantically gesturing at him then angrily at Ratchet. Ratchet responded with more raged shouting amid the worried glances he snuck at Sideswipe.

The ringing started to fade and a massive headache was taking its place.

"I know you're a firm believer of tough love," Sideswipe started almost inaudibly from his dazed spot on the floor, but it caught the attention of the others, "But couldn't I just get a band aid and a lollypop from time to time?"

Ratchet swooped down and suddenly he was cupping both sides of Sideswipe's face in his hands. "Sideswipe? Sideswipe?" he appeared to be searching his face for damage.

"Nu-uh," Sideswipe responded airily. "S'a trap. You _hit_ me last-" he didn't have the energy to finish his thought.

"I'm sorry, Sideswipe. Are you ok?" Ratchet asked urgently.

"You hit me." Sideswipe paused. "My head hurts." he went quiet again. "_No,_" he finally decided on.

"Help me get him on a berth," Ratchet addressed the others. It was a clumsy, arduous task for the three but they managed.

"Primus, Ratchet! What was the point of fixing him if you were just going to crack his head open again?" Trailbreaker screamed.

_**Why don't we just drop Ratchet onto the Decepticons? I bet that would end the war in a day tops.**_

"Good question," Sideswipe mumbled not really sure who he was answering at that point.

"I don't know!" Ratchet snapped back both angry and defensive. The later more than the former. "I just... I don't know." There was fatigue in his voice.

Sideswipe didn't like that tone. He'd tell Ratchet that if it weren't for the room spinning.

"Skid's was right," Ratchet finally said with defeat in his voice. "I don't think he knows."

Trailbreaker and Hound looked oddly heartbroken at that statement.

"Know what?" Sideswipe asked blearily. Things were getting fuzzy.

_**You probably don't want to know. Ignorance is bliss and all that Jazz.**_

"Oh be quiet," Sideswipe snapped mildly.

They were all ignoring him though.

"You both saw firsthand what happened. I have to go back to Prowl. I can't declare him fit for duty," Ratchet whispered.

The three stood in silence. Sideswipe merely tried to stay awake.

"What are we going to do?" Hound asked quietly. He gripped at his right shoulder as if still expecting the burnt stub that had been there mere hours before. "We need everyone. Sideswipe's probably our best fighter after Prime."

"I don't know!" Ratchet snapped waspishly. "I don't know," he said softly. "But I can't in good conscious let him go out and fight-"

BLACKNESS


	5. Chapter 6

Sideswipe flipped the knife absentmindedly in his hand.

"Thunder_! Thunder! __**Thunder!**__ Thundercats! HOOOO!" _Lion-O yelled from the TV.

_**You haven't seen this episode before.**_

"I know. " Sideswipe scooted back into a more comfortable position on the couch. He caught the blade one last time and started to inspect the black metal.

He didn't remember sitting down.

_**What were you doing earlier?**_

Good question. He leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling as if the answers would just drop in on his head.

Ratchet had hit him earlier. Pretty hard actually. It knocked him out for several minutes.

_**Then what?**_

He wasn't entirely sure. Oh wait, Ratchet talked to him when he finally came to. He hadn't apologized either, the jerk.

Brusquely the medic had notified Sideswipe that he had spoken to Prowl while the twin had been unconscious. Sideswipe was being put on restrictive duty. At least until it was evident that he wasn't concussed or something.

"That's probably a load of bull," Sideswipe complained to himself. He knew what a concussion was like and he certainly didn't have one. If he didn't know any better he'd think they were using stall tactics. It was like they were trying to keep him out of battle.

At least Ratchet was.

_**I dunno, **_the voice began skeptically_**, You've been losing time. Are you sure it wasn't a concussion?**_

"No, I'm not," Sideswipe answered truthfully. That brought him back to his previous question. When did he get to the rec-room? At least it wasn't the medical wing, but still...

He went back to retracing his steps.

After that news Sideswipe remembered ending up in front of the bulletin. It was a massive screen that held everyone's schedule and duties and was updated daily by Jazz and Prowl.

Instead of mechs picking jobs they actually wanted to do it seemed that Prowl and Jazz would rather assign them duties by Ouija board or whatever random-as-frack selection process they used.

Still you had to give Prowl props for being so organized. Especially since Jazz didn't really do _anything _but make work harder for the second in command when it came to the mundane chore.

If the task ever fell on Sideswipe's shoulders, the warrior mech would probably end up gouging out his processor with a rusty spoon. He didn't feel that he had the capacity to do the mundane task of scheduling everyone in the ARK _everyday_ on top of his regular duties.

Still Prowl managed, and even though most grumbled about their tasks more often than not, it did keep the ARK running smoothly.

_**Nobody should be that good at organizing. It's not natural.**_

"I think Prowl was bitten by a radio-active spread-sheet at some point and he mutated some spectacular systematic skills," Sideswipe said jokingly.

_**True dat.**_

He flicked the knife in the air as he tried to remember more of his day.

Right. Sideswipe wasn't on the schedule still.

He remembers looking for his name on the board and finding his row oddly empty. Maybe he had misunderstood Ratchet when the CMO had said restrictive duty, but he was pretty sure that 'restrictive' still meant he would have work. It would just be light.

He actually missed being busy. It was weird. While being forced to perform his soldierly duties he usually would dream off all the things he'd do if only he had the time. Movies, video games, travel.

Suddenly he was freed up and found that he didn't want to do anything.

He stretched out on the couch and spun the blade between his fingers deep in contemplation.

There had been something else.

Something else on the board that he had looked for but he couldn't remember what it was.

Next thing he knew he was watching cartoons on the couch in the rec room. By himself.

He felt a wave of loneliness pass.

He leaned sideways and let himself fall on his back. He held the knife in front of his face and took a moment to inspect it.

It was actually Sunstreaker's. Sideswipe knew that because he had gotten it as a gift for his twin. He found the knife back when he still worked on the docks just weeks before they were shipped off to the radioactive frontlines of Ra'el.

It was made from cybertanium; an incredibly rare, nearly indestructible alloy that could be found as a black or silver ore depending on where you mined it. It was a good metal to make weapons out of. It held its edge well and was sturdy enough for the long haul. Also it was probably the greatest absorber of energy known to Cybertronians.

He could probably leave it in a volcano for a week, fish it out of the lava and the knife would look no worse for wear.

_**Optimus has an axe made out of the stuff. **_

"Oh, yeah. The one that comes out of his arm. That thing's cool," Sideswipe mused. "I think he has a shield too but I haven't seen him use it much."

_**You should get something like it.**_

"I'd have an easier time getting custom built armor made out of solid gold."

"I thought about that once. Decided it wouldn't be practical in battle. Too pliant." Sunstreaker gracefully strode into the room and took a seat on one of the smaller chairs since Sideswipe was taking up the whole couch.

"Do mine audios deceive me?" Sideswipe asked with joking surprise. "Has the great Streaker of the Suns succumbed to practicality over his own appearance?"

Sunstreaker gave him a flat, not amused look.

"Thou hast the humor of a surly, earth-vexingstick in the mud," Sideswipe sulked.

Sunstreaker's lips lifted into something of an annoyed smile. "Where do you come up with this stuff?"

"Moving pictures foretold by thine fabled _Entertainment Weekly_."

"Someone needs to _get thee a life_," Sunstreaker muttered tonelessly. "Anyway what are you doing in here?"

"What are _you_ doing in here?"

"I asked you first."

"Apparently Ratchet knocked me out. I'm on restrictive duty till they're sure he didn't break anything in my head." Sideswipe gave his helmet a light rap with his knuckles for good measure.

"It's too late for _that_." Sunstreaker briefly looked at the T.V. "Besides, I thought restrictive duty still meant work. You're just watching cartoons."

"I know. It sucks," Sideswipe whined then looked somewhat mortified. "I never thought I'd say _that_."

His brother looked mildly surprised too. "Wow. He really must've hit you _really _hard."

"He did. And because of that I'm gonna be stuck doing basically this-"

"Which is nothing."

"Yes. Thanks for pointing that out," Sideswipe said in deadpan. "So I'm going to be doing nothing until they decide whether or not I'm concussed. Unless they can come up with another excuse to keep me a useless lump."

"You might as well listen until they figure out what to do with you. When we don't listen it leads to bad things. Bad things ending in Ratchet."

"Yeah," Sideswipe nodded sagely. "He calls it tough love. Obviously I need some brushing up on my human languages because I think the words he's really looking for are _physical _and_ abuse. _What happened to first do no harm_?_"

"I dunno, but I think he hits you more than me." Sunstreaker's shoulders rose and fell. "I think with all the screaming it's closer to psychological abuse in my case."

"It's probably a healthy dose of both." Sideswipe rubbed the back of his helmet and moped. "But at least we can usually make fun of him and have fun while we get the slag beaten out of us. Lately it hasn't even been _that_. It's like he doesn't have the energy to be mad at me."

What he wouldn't give for a _normal _Ratchet tantrum.

"But he K.O'ed you," Sunstreaker pointed out. "That sounds mad."

"I know, but it wasn't normal. It's another one of those you'd have to be there things," Sideswipe explained.

"Hey do we have a psychologist in our unit?" Sunstreaker smirked. "We may need help. How will we ever recover from this apparent ongoing trauma?"

"Yeah, I think Skids is," Sideswipe answered with a frown.

"… Who's Skids?"

"You know. The mech that visited me the other day. He's the one that studies all that (whatchamacallit?) that psychosomatic slag."

"Really?" Sunstreaker looked legitimately mystified by this news. "What does he look like?"

"I dunno. Blue? Turns into a hatchback?" Sideswipe described.

"Huh." Sunstreaker leaned back into his chair. "I don't remember seeing anyone like that. You sure you didn't imagine it?"

Sideswipe gave his brother a flat look.

"What?" his brother teased. "You _did_ get your head cracked open pretty recently, and Ratchet _does_ have a mean right hook."

"Oh hush and watch the cat people kicking Mumm-Ra's bony ass."

Sunstreaker snickered and the two turned their attention back to the screen.

Sideswipe stretched like a content cat letting his stiff shoulder struts release their tension. He was happy. He really appreciated all the time he had been spending with his brother. Especially more than usual since the rest of his (so called) friends were pretty much avoiding him like the plague. Moments with his twin were the closest thing he had to a sense of normalcy in days. It was the only thing that seemed ordinary and right compared to everything else.

That being said something was destined to disrupt it.

Sideswipe heard the booming footsteps before he saw the mech but made no move to move. It was common for the Dinobots to wander around the base, and usually it was best to simply leave them alone.

Sideswipe had learned that the hard way in the past, though he still antagonized them time to time.

But then the Dinobot's stomping got louder. The next thing Sideswipe knew Snarl was hovering over the couch looking straight down at him, his face contorted into something distressed.

His appearance was so sudden that it jarred the supine twin.

For a second Sideswipe thought Snarl had found his way into the rec room to either, A, watch cartoons or, B, find Sunstreaker. Weird as it was the two got along oddly well ever since Sunstreaker started giving the antisocial, gruff Dinobot art lessons.

Birds of a feather and whatnot.

But then Sideswipe noticed that the Dinobot was staring down intently at _him_ with an expression that could bore holes in steel, and suddenly he was feeling _very_ unsafe.

It all happened so fast. Sideswipe didn't have time to react other than to instinctively brace himself and drop his brother's knife by accident. Unfortunately by the time he realized what was going on Snarl already had a hold on his waist, and he was easily lifting the red mech into the air and off the couch.

Sunstreaker was suddenly on his feet, but the gold twin stopped short of doing anything actually _useful_, Sideswipe noted. He seemed too bewildered to do anything but watch the scene unfold before him.

Suddenly massive arms were encircling Sideswipe's frame effectively trapping his arms at his sides. Since the stegosaurus transformer was almost twice Sideswipe's height his legs were dangling helplessly several feet off the ground.

Sideswipe's first guess was that Snarl was going to try to crush him to death, and for a brief second he tried to think of what he had done to incur such a fate. He hadn't even seen the Dinobots in weeks. Then again he had been losing bits of time. Did he do something and not remember it? Maybe he deserved what was coming to him.

Frag that. He wanted to _live_.

So he started struggling. However a few moments ticked by and he realized that, one, he was no match for Snarl's superior strength and, two, he wasn't being crushed. Yes, the hold Snarl had on him was firm, but it was surprisingly gentle given that he was in the clutches of the surliest of the Dinobots.

Then it occurred to Sideswipe that this wasn't a bear hug of death designed to squeeze the life out of the red twin.

It was just a hug.

From _Snarl_, the Dinobot who historically hated Sideswipe more than any other Dinobot.

"Um. There, there, Big Guy?" Sideswipe tried patting the mech in a consoling manner (though for what he wasn't sure) but he couldn't budge his arms.

Snarl stared down at Sideswipe, true-blue optics locked on violet-blue.

Then for a second a tortured expression lit the Dinobot's face.

Snarl ducked his head and buried his face at the crook between Sideswipe's shoulder and neck.

Sideswipe tensed up for a moment just in case the Dinobot decided to try to rip the cables out of his neck with his teeth.

But that didn't happen. The Dinobot merely tightened his hold and Sideswipe continued to endure the awkward embrace.

Sideswipe spotted his brother who looked about as mortified as Sideswipe felt, and mouthed a, 'Help?'

'What do you want me to do?' Sunstreaker mouthed back angrily.

'I don't know but you shared your crayons with him. He likes you _a lot_ more than he likes me,' Sideswipe answered with quiet desperation.

'It sure doesn't _look_ that way.'

'He hates me! Save me before he remembers that!'

Suddenly, Snarl's large arms were moving again and Sideswipe braced himself for the kill blow. Instead, hands gently found their way to under Sideswipe's arms and the Dinobot softly set the melee warrior back down on the ground.

"Me, Snarl, am Sorry," his gravelly voice rumbled. He sounded a little melancholy.

"Uh. It's ok, Buddy. Next time you wanna hug you can, uh, ask?" It came out as more of a question than Sideswipe intended but could you blame him?

Snarl offered no other words. He slowly backed up, turned on his heel and with thundering steps left.

The only noise left in his wake was the TV because the twins were too stunned to do anything.

"What… was _that_?" Sideswipe asked stiffly, too scared to move.

Sunstreaker was just as flabbergasted. "I don't have a frackin' clue."

"Ok. That's it. I obviously have _way_ too much energy to burn because I must be seeing slag now. I'm going to the training hall to go hit something before I start seeing the pink elephants. You in?" Sideswipe pulled the abandoned knife off the couch and stored it in subspace.

"Frag no." Sunstreaker dropped himself back into the chair. "I just polished my armor."

0000000000

Thud, thud. Thud, thud- BAM!

Sideswipe hit the padded bag with a vengeance.

It felt good to hit something again, familiar. It had been so long since he had been in anything remotely like a combat situation and he really did have a lot of pent up energy to burn. He ducked, jabbed, kneed and attacked the bag with a strange mix of boxing and martial arts.

Thud, thud. Thud, thud, THUD WHAM!

Also it was helping him vent and think. He felt a hundred percent better and yet it didn't seem like he would be going into battle in the foreseeable future. There was an odd part of him that was ok with that, was ok with not doing _anything_ really, but then he remembered the injured he saw not a day before. Even if the jerks hadn't visited him while he was hurt he still felt the odd need to at least be out there in the field with them.

It was a military thing. Even, Sunstreaker (and you could count the mechs he really got along with on one hand) had a sense of brothers in arms.

WHAM!

The impact echoed in the empty room.

He felt a stab of hurt. The isolation and loneliness had been the thing that had bothered him most over the last few days. It had bothered him more than anything.

Why was everyone avoiding him?

Bluestreak, Brawn, Skyfire, Jazz? Where had they been? Didn't anyone care? Even now that he was _healed_ no one came to him to see how he was.

**Why?**

Thud THUD CRACK!

His last jab missed the bag completely and his fist was now occupying a rather hefty dent in the wall. He pulled his hand back and inspected the lightly scratched paint on his knuckles.

A revelation hit him.

He was hitting the bag but his spark wasn't in it. It dawned on him that he was just going through the motions of a fight. As much as Sideswipe wanted to crave the fire of battle he just didn't. He didn't want to go out because he _wanted_ to fight. There was another reason.

He just wasn't sure what.

Sideswipe was a warrior born mech which made him a little unique to the Autobots. Whereas most of his comrades had been built for other more industrial purposes Sideswipe was created with combat in mind.

But a lot of mechs forgot that that was just one facet of who the twin was. Sideswipe was good at weapons, fighting, and combat strategy but he was more than just a soldier. He had been a dock trader once and was good at getting things accomplished. He liked goofing off, and laughing and that usually drew people to him.

It was the same with Sunstreaker. Most saw him as nothing more than a sociopathic killer, but Sunstreaker had been an _artist _before their battle with the Decepticons went from minor uprising to all out war. He was a famous one too. Not many in the ARK knew since he had used a different name back then as well.

_**His original name. He never liked it much.**_

_'Spin-Out.' _Sideswipe frowned._ 'He didn't like the lack of control it implied.'_

Despite these other characteristics, mechs more often than not tended to define Sideswipe and his brother by their reputations on the battlefield and by their status of being twins.

Sideswipe quickly spun and hit the bag with a powerful back kick.

**WHUMP**

So if that's how everyone saw him why were they keeping him _off_ the battlefield? Why was everyone doing their best to keep Sideswipe in the dark regarding the nature of the injuries he received? Why did they feel the need to prevent Sideswipe from knowing how he had been hurt?

Why were his repairs extended over such a long period of time when he usually was slapped together and sent out to fight the good fight that same day?

If everyone saw him as born soldier then it would make sense that they would know that Sideswipe was the last mech who needed to be sheltered from anything.

For Primus' sake, he and his brother spent most of the goddamned war on the frontlines of Ra'el, the irradiated scar that divided Cybertron.

Ra'el had been hell, and their survival there cemented their infamous reputations as heavy hitters.

Nothing that happened to him on Earth could be worse than what happened to him on the battlefields of Cybertron at the height of the war.

He deserved to know.

That was _it._

An angry glint lit behind Sideswipes optics and he stalked off, the punching bag swinging listlessly behind him.

He had had enough.

Once and for all someone was going to tell him what the _hell_ was going on even if he had to beat it out of them.

He ignored the burning in his spark.

0000000000000

The easiest mech to find was Prowl since he was usually just in his office. Prowl had a unique position as an upper ranking officer which meant that he pretty much knew everything that was going on in the ARK.

At all times.

It made sense for Sideswipe to storm there first.

When he reached Prowl's office he suddenly wished the doors in the Ark swung on a hinge like human ones did.

Patiently typing in an access code and waiting for the door to slide open soundlessly wasn't as dramatic of an entrance as slamming a door open.

It actually made him feel a little stupid. He was _mad_. He had been ready to go _Hulk Smash_ on Prowl's office to get his anger across in fact. Now, denied his explosive door slamming entrance he felt like he was five and throwing a tantrum.

The four mechs huddled around Prowl's desk hadn't even heard him come in.

Despite his lackluster entry Sideswipe pulled his shoulders back, straightened his posture and tried to make himself look as tall and intimidating as possible before he addressed the other mechs. "Hey!" he barked.

The four looked up startled.

It was Prowl, Jazz, Ratchet and Skids. He lucked out. At least three of the four Bots he wanted to see were present. Actually Jazz hadn't visited him in the med bay either so he was sort of on Sideswipe's growing shit-list as well. How convenient that they were all together. They seemed to be having a meeting, but it was going to have to wait.

Sideswipe stalked in only pausing to listen to the quiet click as the doors slid closed behind him.

_**Man. So lame.**_

"Sideswipe? What are you doing here?" Prowl asked calmly. The others seemed relieved when the Second in Command started talking. Most likely because it meant none of them had too.

This was good because Skids and Ratchet looked at a loss, and Jazz, uncharacteristic as it was, looked like he wanted to crawl into a hole and hide.

"It has been seven days," Sideswipe began with barely restrained anger, "And you know what I've done in that time? _Nothing._ I'm fully repaired and back to a hundred percent and for some reason I'm not on the roster. What_. Gives_?"

Prowl gave a calculated answer. "You had received some very traumatic injuries. It wouldn't be logical to send you back into the fight until we're absolutely positive that the repairs will hold."

"Bull shit, Prowl. " Sideswipe jabbed a finger angrily at his commanding officer, malice in his voice. "You've sent me into battle missing an _arm_ before because you needed me out there. What's the real reason?"

Prowl's mouth tightened into a thin line.

Sideswipe's gaze swept over the other three mechs before he fixated on Skids.

"You," He gestured to Skids, "are a psychologist, right? Is there something wrong with my head? I don't know how you would know that since you saw me only once, but a chunk of my memory is gone and I_ have_ been losing time. Really if something was damaged in my head you can just tell me and stop pussy footing around the point. Seriously, Ratchet can probably fix it in no time."

_**I think it's more complicated than that.**_

'_Quiet, Voice.' _Sideswipe ordered._ 'I'm having angry words with my superiors right now.'_

"You've been losing time?" Ratchet slammed his hands on the desk and stood up alarmed. "You stupid, slagging twit! You're supposed to tell me things like that!"

"How!" Sideswipe shouted back matching his medic in volume. "You've barely said anything to me in a week and the last time I saw you you punched me in the slagging face!"

"Both of you! Cool your jets! Yellin' ain't gettin' us anywhere!" Jazz tried placating the two

Sideswipe took notice. That was the first thing he had heard Jazz say in a long time.

That wasn't normal.

Everything was _wrong._

"Ok, look." Prowl raised one hand as a calming gesture. "Let's all discuss Sideswipe's concerns as rational mechs. Sideswipe, what is it you wish to speak about?"

Ratchet and Jazz both looked aghast at Prowl's suggestion.

"Prowl-" Jazz began, sounding concerned.

"No." Prowl raised his hand higher to silence the special ops. His voice was unusually tight. "We have been handling a precarious situation with too many blanks. Sideswipe has a right to be frustrated and it's best that we learn what he knows so we can handle this all with more _savoir-faire_. Sideswipe, if you would take a seat."

Sideswipe stared at them all dumbly.

_**What are you waiting for? This is what you wanted right?**_

'_Yeah,'_ he affirmed unsurely.

_**Then what are you just standing there for? Go lay everything out on the table while you have the chance!**_

Sideswipe didn't sit. Instead, he eyed the four suspiciously.

They all looked so tired. It was like they had all failed at something important they had been trying to accomplish.

"I don't remember anything before waking up in the med bay," Sideswipe started before he could have second thoughts. "While I was there, other than the expected, not _one person_ visited me. That _doesn't happen_. Also I'm never kept there that long. Twenty-four hours tops, but for twelve days? On top of that everyone has been acting weirdly serious; _Ratchet_ isn't even acting normal around me, and for some reason, in addition to the memory loss, I've been losing time. Every time I've tried to find out what landed me in the medical bay in the first place either mechs find a way to get around telling me, they act like I know what the hell is going even though I don't, or for some reason, when someone actually does try to hint at what happened, my stupid head locks up and everything goes blank. More often than not, I end up on the floor. "

The others stared.

"And I just got hugged by a Dinobot," Sideswipe added flatly. "So if the apocalypse is coming just lay it on me."

"You had a cerebral bleed which can account for the short term memory that you initially lost," Ratchet explained warily, "but that was one of the first things I repaired. Your cerebral cortex should be in working order. There's no reason for you to be losing time."

"Unless it's a coping method," Skids said quietly.

"Coping method?" Sideswipe spat. He waved his arms angrily. "Coping for what? From getting a booboo?"

Something in Sideswipe's words made Ratchet snap.

"You ignorant child. You have _no_ idea," Ratchet hissed with a vehemence way past his normal fury. His hands began to shake and his voice was trembling with pent up rage. "A _booboo_? Do you even know how trivial you're treating the wounds you had? You have no idea how damaged you were! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW HARD IT WAS TO KEEP YOU ALIVE!"

Sideswipe did not back down. All the frustration and helplessness he had been feeling was coming to a head and he bellowed back, "THEN FOR PRIMUS' SLAGGING SAKE JUST **TELL ME ALL FRAKING READY**!"

"Sideswipe, calm yourself!" Prowl ordered with a leveled intensity.

_**All around me are familiar faces. Worn out faces. Worn out faces.**_

"No!" Sideswipe yelled completely foregoing all military protocol when addressing superiors. "I will not calm down! It's been a slagging week and everybody is still keeping me in the dark about what happened! I was injured! Badly! I get that, I read the medical report, but why it such a big deal? It's happened before and I'm still here! I'm a big boy. I can handle the nitty gritty details!

Prowl began speaking with a sad countenance, "Sideswipe you don't understand-"

"You're right, Prowl, I don't!" Sideswipe snapped, voice raising several decibels as a week of aggravation bubbled up. "For the last seven days I've been _alone_, _ignored_ and treated like a god damned _pariah _without any freaking explanation! Why? Because of _how_ I was hurt?"

"IT'S NOT ABOUT YOUR INJURIES YOU JACKASS!" Ratchet raged.

"Sideswipe, stop!" Someone behind him yelled. Sideswipe briefly spared a glance over his shoulder and saw his brother.

Wow. Prowl's door was really quiet. He never heard his brother enter.

His yellow twin was looking concerned and angry, and that made _Sideswipe_ mad because when he thought about it his sibling had been just as bad as everyone else. Sunstreaker was his brother. He was supposed to be on his side, trying to help him fill in the missing puzzle pieces.

"Oh shut up!" Sideswipe spat caustically before turning back to his commanding officers. "No one is telling me anything, I've been kept out of battles while my stupid so called _friends_ have been getting hurt, and I've been losing time. If you all know why you'd damned well better start explaining because I'm tired of this shit!"

Everyone looked petrified. Skid's looked like his mind was going a million miles per hour. Jazz looked overwhelmingly guilty about something. Ratchet's optics were lowered with defeat and it seemed like he was bracing himself for something. Only Prowl was managing to maintain a steely expression but even he looked a little shaken. Probably because Sideswipe's cybertanium knife was lodged deep into the wall next to his head.

Sideswipe looked at his hand where the knife was supposed to be.

He didn't remember getting it out of subspace. He definitely didn't remember throwing it.

"I'm sorry," Sideswipe said quietly if not strained as he realized what he had done.

_**If you had really wanted to hit him you would have.**_

'_Awesome. I'm so going to the brig for this.'_ Sideswipe's spark fell.

He readied himself for the immediate arrest that was probably going to follow throwing a _knife _at his superior officer. However, the response he got was not what he was expecting.

Prowl sighed, his door wings dipping ever so slightly.

"No, Sideswipe. I'm the one who should be sorry. We haven't been handling your situation well," the police car admitted with a heavy burden in his voice.

"We just wanted," Ratchet piped up sounding exhausted and defeated, "to protect you."

"Why?" Sideswipe looked at each of the five in turn. He repeated with more fervor, "Why? I'm a front liner! I'm a private first class mobile artillery unit! I'm one of the first on the battlefield and the last to leave. I'm the military's speed bump. It's my job to be sent into the scary slag that no one else wants to handle. I don't need protecting." His tantrum was losing steam. "What are you protecting me from?"

They were quiet.

_**It's a mad world.**_

"I'm just tired of all of this. Everything's been wrong. I'm sick of being useless, alone and bored. Do you realize that the only person I've actually been spending time with on a consistent basis is my own brother? How sad is that?" He pointed a thumb at the yellow mech behind him and let out a short, mirthless laugh.

Sideswipe's smile wilted off his face the second he noticed the absolute horror being expressed by everyone else.

"Guys," Sideswipe started self-consciously, "He's really not that bad. I promise."

"Sideswipe," Skids began hesitantly. "Have you been _seeing_ Sunstreaker?"

"Uh. Yeah?"

Was that a trick question?

"He's my twin. It's sort of hard _not_ to see him. We share a room you know." Sideswipe let out a nervous laugh in an attempt to diffuse the situation.

Something dawned on the faces of the mechs in front of him. It was suddenly as if they understood something that hadn't made sense for the first time. Seconds later their expressions began to morph into different levels of absolute dismay.

"Oh, Primus." Jazz's voice was barely above a whisper.

"Ok. You guys are freaking me out." The rage and helplessness Sideswipe had been feeling quickly evaporated and was replaced by unease and the urge to flee. "Look just please think about it. I'm more use to you on the battlefield then I am when I'm being guarded like some dumb, delicate flower. When you all feel ready enough to tell me what's been going on I'll be in my room. Come on, Sunny."

Sideswipe made to reach for his brother. Sunstreaker started to backpedal away from Sideswipe but he was too slow. Sideswipe grabbed his arm.

Or he would've had there been anything to grab.

His hand closed around air where his brother's arm should have.

Sideswipe froze up. Complete and utter shock coursed through his form.

He stood there, fixated on the closed hand that was currently grasping at nothing.

_**It's a mad world.**_

Sunstreaker wasn't looking at him. His face was turned away.

"This. What is this? Guys. Come on this isn't... this isn't funny," Sideswipe voice started cracking as he tried grabbing the image of his brother again. Sunstreaker made no effort to move this time as Sideswipe's hand ghosted through his chest plate. "Seriously, Hound, wherever you are come out and make the stupid hologram go away. This is a joke right? This isn't funny."

And the others just watched in horror and in heartbreak at the awful scene unfolding in front of them.

"This isn't funny," Sideswipe repeated more desperately. More scared. "Why would you all do this to me? This isn't funny. Where is Sunstreaker?"

No one said anything.

It was Ratchet who eventually took the plunge and stepped forward. He had to strain to keep his voice steady. "Sideswipe, this isn't a joke."

"Damn straight it's not!" Sideswipe was getting hysterical. "Where is he? For Primus' sake Sunny was there when I woke the first time! I've seen him every day! Why would he be hiding now? Why are you guys _doing this_ to me? Make the hologram go away and help me find my brother!"

"Sideswipe, there's no hologram there," Ratchet explained quietly.

"But what's…" Sideswipe whipped his head to the intangible form of his brother. It looked so like his twin, so real, but there was an alien expression of sadness on his pretty features.

Sideswipe stared.

No one else saw him?

He slowly turned to look back at Ratchet's own grief-stricken face.

"Ratchet," Sideswipe's voice was hoarse. "Where's my brother?"

It took the medic all he had to choke out the words, "He's dead, Sideswipe."

The weight of those words slammed into Sideswipe with the force of a bullet train, and he almost doubled over from the simple shock, and nausea he felt.

This must be what having the air knocked out of you feels like.

That had to be a lie.

He'd know if his brother was dead. He'd know!

_**You did know.**_

_The burning in his spark. The freezing._

_He wanted to scream. To cry. To tear at his chest._

_The leaps in time any time he was too close to what happened._

_His body shutting down at the slightest hint of the truth._

"What?" Sideswipe choked out.

Sideswipe's spark burned. His hand snapped up to grip at his smooth chestplate, above where his spark was.

"He was killed in the battle that almost killed you," Prowl elaborated, voice soft and strangely gentle. "You were ambushed. The Decepticon's left a false message for Jazz and me. We were to rendezvous with Mirage out in the desert to discuss an energy field. You and your brother took our place and by the time we realized it was a trap it was too late."

Jazz stood behind Prowl looking like the weight of the world was crushing down on him.

That explained the guilt the special ops had been displaying.

Sideswipe felt like a sailor on a listless tide as he watched a great storm approach from afar.

"Up until yesterday, we thought you knew he was gone."

Sideswipe didn't know who spoke that last sentence.

Everything was getting claustrophobic. He could hear his own spark pulsing in his audios drowning out all other sound. The walls were closing in on him. The numbness was paralyzing. His body was going haywire.

'_This is a lie. I have to find Sunstreaker. I have to find Sunstreaker. I need to prove to them he's ok.'_

_**You need to prove to yourself.**_

Sideswipe nearly crashed into Prowl's door before it had time to open but the second he was in open hallway he bolted.

He heard the others scramble to give chase behind him. He heard mechs calling his name and a desperate order for someone to go get Prime, but it barely registered in his audios.

'_Need to find Sunstreaker,'_ was the mantra in his head.

In his vehicle mode he was not the fastest mech. Mirage, Bluestreak and Wheeljack beat him out of that category.

But when it came to running his height and lean form gave him the advantage. He easily left his pursuers in the dust.

His shoulder struts, servos, and newly repaired joints and muscle pistons strained under the activity. He hadn't moved so much in weeks. A few days ago he could barely walk. Now he was running so fast that the world blurred and his peds barely ever touched the ground.

He dodged bewildered mechs in the hallways, leapt over obstacles and obstructions and never lost speed. Nothing mattered but his brother.

He was running on instinct. His spark's pulse was hammering in his head, and was the only thing he could hear in his head other than the mantra 'Find Sunny'. The others had joked before that if you had dropped the twins blindfolded on the opposite ends of the Earth with no GPS or tracking equipment they'd be able to find each other anyway.

They were right. There was no logic to it but they were right.

He skid around a sharp corner and nearly lost his balance in the process. His fingers dug into the floor, metal squealing on metal as he tried to right himself.

_'Sunny. Have to find Sunny.'_

He wasn't following any kind of signal. He wasn't tracing any residual energy but his body seemed to know exactly where to go.

He crashed into the medical bay, ran deep into the recesses of the winding wing until he was in the storage hall.

One room at the end stood out. It was as unasumming as all the other doors but he was being drawn_ there._

It was just a knowing he couldn't explain to people who didn't have a twin.

He rushed shoulder first into the supply room door only to bounce off the reinforced steal with a dented shoulder guard for his trouble. He let out a strangled yell and rammed the door twice in succession before there was a dent and hole big enough for him to pry his fingers into. He wedged his hands in and forced the doors appart.

The room was dark. He stumbled in.

The area was mostly empty save for one thing.

On the berth there he was. Gold was gray. Violet-blue optics were black. Meticulously kept armor was shredded and torn. His beautiful face was cruelly intact and peaceful.

As if he was asleep.

_Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over._

Everything Sideswipe had forgotten, everything his mind had so desperately tried to bury came surfacing back to him in a rush.

He remembered the smoky afternoon sky. He remembered the unending pain and being unable to move because of some strange dead weight pinning him down.

The weight that had been pinning him down had been…

Oh, Primus.

His brother. It had been his brother. The mass that had been trapping him into the smoldering glass and rubble had been _Sunstreaker_.

The memories wouldn't stop. Everything was flooding back. That blow to the head he received. How he defiantly had tried to stand and face his enemy though he could barely get beyond a pained and dazed stance. The dizziness, the slowness of his reflexes at that moment. How he heard his brother screaming for him, sounding tinny and distant. How suddenly his brother's voice rushed toward him like a wave and suddenly boomed in his audios. How he felt the feather light brush of his brother's hands on his shoulders. How he was swung around and angled just in front of his sibling.

How…

"_Sideswi-!"_

BAM

Something slammed into him and for a brief moment he felt as though he stopped existing. It was as if his entire being exploded into white hot agony, and the only thing that kept him grounded was the feeling of something to cling to.

He could recall the hazy blur of colors as he and his sibling hurtled at break neck speed from the impact of that cannon. How they finally stopped after crashing.

He had forgotten. Now that he remembered he wanted to forget.

'_I don't have the same burning desire to know everything like you do.' _His fake brother had said to him not more than a few days ago.

He should have listened.

Sideswipe wrapped his arms around himself, dropped to his knees and looked up. The devastation, the horror, and the crushing weight of the sadness he felt bubbled up from the depths of his shattered spark.

He shrieked.

_**It's a mad world Sideswipe, **_the voice in his head said grimly.

He was still screaming when Jazz, Ratchet and Prowl finally arrived and tried to pull him away from his brother's body. Something about the whole thing felt disjointed and disconnected. It was like he was watching all of it as a bystander. It was like everything was happening to someone else.

Time started jumping again.

Jump

Suddenly Ratchet was on the floor holding a broken nasal plate. Energon was leaking from where he was pinching the bridge with his fingers.

Jump

He was clutching at Sunstreaker's body like it was his last lifeline. He despairingly tried to grasp at his brother's back to tighten the desperate embrace, but there was nothing to hold on to.

Sunstreaker's back and torso had been completely burned and hollowed out by some extreme heat. His heat resistant armor had prevented it from burning a hole through his breastplate leaving the front of his chest deceptively intact.

It was just a shell where his spark should have been.

Jump

Prime was there. He had pushed through the others and had enveloped Sideswipe in a hold from behind as he dragged the psychotic twin from his lifeless sibling. Sideswipe kicked, and cursed and did everything in his power to break free but Optimus Prime was far stronger than him.

Jump

Sideswipe had stopped fighting. He was no longer trying to claw and lash out at his commander. Instead he was clinging desperately to the sturdy form of Optimus Prime as a shudder wracked through his body. His leader had a strong arm around his back, his other hand gently holding Sideswipe's head against his shoulder as the red warrior continued to scream.

Prime didn't know what to do. He had never faced anything like _this_. Yet he tried and was saying soothing words to his broken boy soldier.

Sideswipe couldn't hear any of them over his own cries.

Jump

Everything was quiet. Prime still had a hold on Sideswipe probably to prevent him from harming others or himself, but he no longer had the energy. He couldn't handle it. The stress. The anguish. The _horror_. His body revolted against him before his mind would have him do something rash and terrible.

_**Emergency coping method activated.**_

Sideswipe blacked out.

0000000000000000000000

_Thirteen days ago._

Against all odds Sideswipe was stable.

The red twin was still severely damaged and had to be under constant watch, but for the first time in hours Ratchet found that he could have a moment of peace.

Sideswipe's spark had gone red. He should've died, but for some unexplainable reason he had stabilized.

When he had pulled the red mech out of the rubble with Prowl, when he was assessing the horrific injuries and doing frantic repairs he was sure were in vain, Ratchet had been able to remain aloof, professional, detached.

Now without any of that to distract him the magnitude of what happened finally sank in.

He exited the med bay and leaned against the door. He placed one hand over his optics, his entire being screaming despair.

None of this was right.

There was a small group of mechs huddled outside the door holding vigil, waiting for some kind of news on the red twin.

They were looking at him expectantly.

"He's stable," Ratchet began. The others let out a collective sigh but the medic cut it short. "But there is no way it'll hold. Losing Sunstreaker is too traumatic. He's going to _die_."

"Maybe not. We've all lost people in this war," Skyfire said gently. "We all know what it's like."

"_No_," Ratchet was curt with his reply. "No we don't. None of us can even _fathom _what he's going through right now. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around it. Sideswipe didn't lose an old buddy from the academy he lost his twin brother. Don't you understand? A part of Sideswipe is _dead._ Could you imagine that? It would be like have your spark ripped apart."

"You can't survive having half your spark disappear," Bluestreak said quietly.

"Sunstreaker was Sideswipe. Sideswipe was Sunstreaker. They share a single spark. They _shared _a single spark. But Sideswipe lost half and is left with the pieces. Primus, just the shock of losing Sunstreaker should've killed him."

"It almost did. But," Bumblebee started sadly. "You saved him."

"I did," Ratchet scoffed. "But what does it even matter? What did I doom him too? A life of a kind of loneliness none of us can begin to understand? And you know what? He's still going to die probably."

"Don't say that, Ratchet," Skyfire said in a tone harsher than he was accustomed too.

"In the existence of the Cybertronian race only fourteen split sparks were stabile enough to become twins. Each of their cases were carefully recorded. Of the thirteen sets that existed before Sideswipe and Sunstreaker there was not one case where one twin survived the death of his sibling. With that precedent, for all intents and purposes Sideswipe should be dead now. I have no Primus fraking clue why he's still alive."

"Sideswipe's strong. He'll pull through."

"None of you get it," Ratchet said sounding drained. "Because if the ongoing shock of this whole damn thing doesn't get to him, the isolation or the broken heart will."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

So… a lot of you pretty much saw this coming, but it's only the beginning. There's still much left to Sideswipe's story.


	6. Chapter 1 part 1

Sunstreaker hated dealing with his brother early in the morning. His obnoxiousness was usually magnified by tenfold in the wee hours of dawn. It was bad enough that Sunstreaker had been called outside before he could give his armor a proper buff. His idiot twin was just the cherry colored annoyance on top.

"Nrrg." Sideswipe wiped his hand down his face then let it flop to his side. "Five AM is an ugly bitch of an hour."

At least Trailbreaker was being tolerable.

"Uh huh." Sunstreaker half answered still gripped by his own lethargy.

"Today was our day off. I had it all planned out. I was gonna sleep till noon and then watch the Star Wars trilogy with Skyfire. He's never seen them. That is _unacceptable_. UNACCEPTABLE!"

Sunstreaker winced. "Did you miss the energon dispenser and drink a cup of LOUD for breakfast this morning?"

"Morning? It's not morning! It's the middle of the freaking night!" Sideswipe revved his engine loudly. "There are _stars_ out, Man! _STARS_!"

"If you don't stop yelling in my audio in the next five seconds you will never breathe again."

"I don't breathe in the first place! Man we've been around humans for _way_ too long. Give it another ten years and we'll all think we're organic."

"You know," Trailbreaker piped up from where he was sitting on a boulder, "Just the other day Huffer almost had a panic attack when he got stuck in a lake. He was flailing around thinking he was going to drown or something. I mean seriously. It took us like ten minutes to remind him that he could sink to the bottom and walk back to shore."

"Huh." Sunstreaker paused to give the odd notion some thought. "We are picking up a lot of weird habits. Like _sighing_. Why do we do that?"

"And yawning." At that note Sideswipe yawned. "Jeez, just talking about it makes me wanna do it. Primus, it's early."

"And you complaining about it won't make the day go by any faster," Sunstreaker yawned which was followed by a scowl. Great now he was doing it too.

"I think yawning is a disease. A really strange disease. That can jump species apparently." Sideswipe growled then yawned again. "Rrg. Ok. Need to stop talking about it. Just thinking about it triggers it."

"Ah, I don't think the morning is that bad," Trailbreaker added brightly. "At least we'll get to see the sun rise in an hour or so."

"I don't wanna watch the sunrise," Sideswipe whined. "I wanna recharge."

"Don't talk to him. You'll only encourage it."

"Hey, guys. So what exactly are we supposed to be doing now anyway?" Smokescreen emerged from the darkness and walked up to the group.

"Well look who finally decided to show up," Sunstreaker halfheartedly sneered.

It was too early.

"Hey." Sideswipe gave his fellow sneaky charmer a fist bump. "We have no idea."

"Well we better get our orders soon. I'm freezing my carburetor off just standing out here." Trailbreaker did a full body shudder.

"It's not that bad out." Sideswipe frowned.

"Says the only bot who isn't affected by the cold," Trailbreaker laughed.

"Hey, Man. It's a pretty shitty ability. You get impenetrable force fields. Mirage gets invisibility. Jazz get's an awesome light and sound show and I always get stuck slogging through the ice while the rest of you fraggers watch."

"I wouldn't call my force fields impenetrable." Trailbreaker shrugged. "And it's not our fault that the wet cold would shut the rest of us down. At least you don't get stuck with those thermal regulator things Wheeljack made for polar missions. Having those things strapped to your chest plate does nothing for the confidence, let me tell you."

"Eh. Wheeljack only blows slag up like fifteen percent of the time. Usually only when he tries something new. He has no problems with old established tech." Sideswipe waved him off.

"Wait." Smokescreen blinked. "You're _defending _him? Didn't he set you on fire one time?"

"Huh? No. I wasn't _exactly_ on fire."

"I clearly remember flames," Smokescreen gave Sideswipe a lopsided grin.

"No oxygen was involved. That was thermate." Sideswipe shrugged

"You mean thermite," Sunstreaker corrected.

"No," Sideswipe elaborated giving his brother an exasperated look. "It was thermate. Being in a vacuum wouldn't make it stop. It took First Aid and Groove forever to put it out. All in all it was a pretty good day actually. Especially after Ratchet caught wind." Sideswipe chuckled darkly.

Sunstreaker could only imagine why. It was a glorious thing when they for once weren't on the receiving end of the Good Doctor's wrath. The fact that in the end it was both Prowl and Wheeljack that got reamed made it all the better.

"Ya know, one day you'll have to tell me the rest of that story. I never really found out what happened then."

"Sure thing. Preferably not while standing in sub zero dark conditions."

"Seriously. Why are we still out here? What are we supposed to be doing?" Smokescreen was getting irritated.

"Hey!" Sideswipe jabbed an accusing finger at the Datsun. "You! You have no right to complain. You've been here two minutes. Marigold and I have been here for a half hour."

"Bite me, Petunia." Sunstreaker growled flatly. "And we're waiting on Jazz."

There was a collective groan.

"Great. And we all know he runs on Jazz time. We'll be out here for days," Trailbreaker lamented.

"And that is why I did not show up on time."

"Screw you, Smokescreen."

"It's kind of weird. Usually we're given our jobs on the bulletin. It's strange to get a sudden mission like this. Especially since it doesn't seem to be that urgent," Trailbreaker noted.

Before anyone else could comment, footsteps and a voice made themselves present in the dark. "Hey! Sideswipe!" Jazz's perky voice flitted from the Ark's entrance.

"Speak of the devil. What took you so long?" Sideswipe griped.

Jazz sauntered up to the group, way too cheery and smiley for how dark and early it was in Sunstreaker's personal opinion.

"Ya wanna do me a solid?" Jazz grinned.

Primus, how Sunstreaker wanted to deck that stupid grin off Jazz's face. He refrained since A, he was tired, and B, it was way too early to start racking up infractions and brig time.

Then again, brig time meant sleep time…

His thoughts were derailed as Sideswipe asked in that snarky way of his, "Why are you asking? You already ordered me out here in the middle of night. On my day off thank you very much."

"Sides, it's the morning." Jazz grinned.

"Well you know what? Morning would be better if it started later."

"Well here's the deal. We actually have two jobs for you guys. Smokescreen and Trailbreaker, You know how Red Alert expanded the sensory net out to twenty miles three months ago? One of the sensory nodes went offline and we for the life of us can't figure out which one. And since Red Alert is pitchin' a fit we need you guys t' find it so it can be repaired."

"And this couldn't wait because?" Smokescreen raised a fairly good point.

Jazz leveled him a look, face genuinely serious for a moment. "Remember the bird?"

There was a moment of silence.

"Right. We'll get right on that." With that the Datsun and SUV both transformed and headed for the perimeter of the security net.

"Jazz. Don't get me wrong. I love ya, Man. But if it turns out we've been standing here since four in the Primus damned morning to indulge Red Alert's paranoia, that monster movie collection of yours? I'm taping the QVC network over every tape you own," so proclaimed Sideswipe in monotone.

Jazz barked out a laugh. "Sorry Sides, but I'm sorta asking you guys more of a favor then ordering you out in field. See this job was originally supposed t' be just Prowlers and me but Prime needs us for somethin' else. We're supposed to go rendezvous with Mirage in about an hour out in the field but ya know conflict of schedules and whatnot. Ya mind covering?"

Sunstreaker glared. Seriously. The fracking hell? Jazz made the schedule. How did that happen? He angrily thought.

"First off, how did that happen when you make the schedules?"Sideswipe gave Jazz a very flat look.

Well if nothing else at least Sideswipe was good at vocalizing things when they were on the same page, and Sunstreaker couldn't be bothered to do it himself.

"Secondly, since you say this isn't an order, you kind of owe me now."

"Wait, what?" Sunstreaker interjected. "We were waiting out here for an hour in the cold, and dark and my finish is dull, and you're agreeing to go on errands for him?"

"What can I say? I like a good barter." Sideswipe shrugged.

"Name your price, Man." Jazz grinned while all but ignoring Sunstreaker.

"I want tomorrow off and I want to watch a Star Wars marathon on Teletraan's big screen. If Prowl complains I expect some interference done on my behalf."

"Deal," Jazz reached a hand out and he and Sideswipe shook on it.

"Do I really need to go? Can't Sideswipe just go by himself?" Sunstreaker lamented. He was tired and less then presentable.

"Aww, what about the buddy system?" Sideswipe whined. He was seemingly more energetic then he had been four minutes ago now with the prospect of a big screen movie night on the horizon.

"Yeah, Sunny? Don't you think Siders should have someone watching his back?" Jazz added jovially, the fragger.

"You really wanna leave me all defenseless and by myself?" Sideswipe whimpered with fake concern in his voice.

Sunstreaker could see the smile threatening to tug up the corner of his twin's lips. Idiot.

And then Sideswipe leveled him with that pitiful look of his: Doe eyes glowing in the dark of the morning.

"You know what? I hate you both," he declared with mild resentment.

0000000000000000

At least the sun was up.

Sunstreaker was on his back, arms folded behind his head as he stared at the sky. His finish already looked like scrap so what difference would grass stains make at this point?

Sideswipe was leaning up against a boulder next to him, arms folded across his knees as he prattled on about something or another. Sunstreaker had tuned him out fifteen minutes after their last check in with Jazz.

It had been about an hour and a half since they received their mission and there were still no signs of Mirage. Jazz forgot to mention the fact that the so called rendezvous was for a time _frame_, not a specific time. That meant they could be waiting minutes or hours for the noble spy.

At least it wasn't so bad. It could be worse. It could be raining. Then there'd be mud.

But seriously, didn't anyone know the importance of punctuality? First Jazz being tardy and then Mirage. Did all special ops have broken internal clocks or something? You'd think with all the covert missions they ended up on timing would be _everything._

But really, it could be worse. The weather was nice, and they weren't really doing anything. It was a moment for him to laze about in his brother's company. Actually Sideswipe's constant chatter was sort of lulling him into recharge which wouldn't be so terrible since he had been rudely awakened before he was completely 100 percent.

A small cloud temporarily crossed the sun shading out the land making the temperature drop to a slightly cooler temperature. Sideswipe wouldn't notice the change. He didn't register cold well. The cloud moved on. The warmth returned. Sideswipe switched topics from photovoltaic-cats to the Autobahn.

Really there were worse things.

"But really, legal speeding. Think about. The wind racing past us, the aerodynamics, it would be-do you hear whistling?"

The change in the direction of that phrase was so jarring Sunstreaker actually pushed himself up by his elbows and looked at his twin with bewilderment. "What?"

"SHOOSH!" Sideswipe slapped a hand over Sunstreaker's mouth.

For a moment Sunstreaker was too stunned to retaliate but before he could inflict violence upon his brother he heard it too.

It was instinct. Both were moving before their minds could catch up. They vaulted over the rocky outcrop they had settled at just before a missile impacted the ground. They hit the dirt as flat as they could to avoid the subsequent shrapnel and rain of exploded rock.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker shared side longed glances from their places in the dirt. It was rare that they ever were caught off guard so badly.

In the span of a few seconds the two had a conversation composed entirely of facial expressions. First a look of confusion was exchanged, then inquiry from Sideswipe, followed by a bemused shrug as response from Sunstreaker. The two had a quick game of rock paper scissors to see who would check the situation. Sideswipe won but before he could get up Sunstreaker pushed his head back down into the dirt before doing it himself. He ignored the red mech's look of irritation as he edged his back to the short ledge serving as their cover and peaked over.

There was a tank rolling up, obnoxious Decepticon insignia plastered on its chassis.

"So?" Sideswipe whispered, "Who tried to blow us up?"

Sunstreaker narrowed his optics and tried to get a better look at the vehicle.

"It's a green tank. I don't know who the frack that is." Sunstreaker slid back down to a sit.

"They're going to be scrap metal in about five seconds." Sideswipe pulled a rifle out of subspace and tossed it to Sunstreaker before grabbing his own.

They heard the sound of a transformation take place in the distance.

"Alright. I'm still tired and don't want to drag this out. It sounds like he's in his bipedal mode now. We take this fragger out, call command, look for Mirage then go home. Got it?" Sunstreaker listed quietly.

"Right. On three?" Sideswipe queried, voice equally low.

"Three."

"Two."

"_One."_

Both whipped their guns over the edge and took steady aim at… nothing.

Sideswipe looked up from his scope in confusion. "I'm not seeing a tank. Or a mech."

"That's impossible," Sunstreaker pulled up a little further over the rocky rim. "I heard him transform. There's nowhere to hide. Where did he-"

Both twins were knocked back as the ground rattled from a large crash. For a split second their thoughts immediately jumped to another missile but when they both whipped around what they saw was more dumbfounding.

A spaceship of gargantuan proportion touched down on the ground.

"Frack! There's more than one!" Sideswipe yelled before clawing backwards out of the hole while firing on the large machine.

They shot at the aircraft as they tried to create more space but their guns seemed to inflict little damage.

And then the Shuttle transformed…

…into a massive tank.

"What in the he-" Sunstreaker was cut short as another shell whizzed by. It nearly took his head off before whistling off in the distance and exploding.

"Ok. So it looks like the Decepticons have a new Triple changer. Fan-tucking-fastic," Sunstreaker grumbled as little bits of rock bounced off his armor.

"Well that explains your disappearing tank," Sideswipe quipped as he butterfly kicked himself over another shell.

"Plans?"

"Break it?" Sideswipe proposed.

"Break it sounds good."

Both made a run for the Tank. The shells were devastating on impact, but big and slow. Relatively easy to avoid.

The Tank shifted its form again. But not into a shuttle or a mech.

It turned into a massive cannon and began to charge.

Sunstreaker came to screeching halt, kicking up dirt as he skid. He was just able to grab the back of Sideswipe neck before his twin got too far ahead of him. He ripped his brother off his feet and both fell to their backs just as a violent discharge of blue energy burned above their heads. The air around the blinding ray of energy rippled from the radiation.

Primus the _heat_ he could feel from the bolt was intense.

The low thrum of energy quieted as the blast traveled further from their position. The relative quiet was short lived. Some miles away the blue bolt either hit something or simply ruptured due to instability because there was a boom and sky was washed out white. A mushroom cloud of blue and lightening rose into the sky.

For the first time in a long time the two were speechless.

'_That looked hotter then thermate,' _Sideswipe reported airily over their com as he rose to a stand. His gun was quickly raised back up.

"_I think it was plasma based. Or nuclear," _Sunstreaker answered back sounding equally dumbstruck.

"You have exceptionally good reaction time. I commend you." The cannon began to transform. Joints and metal plates clicked and snapped into place.

Then there stood a behemoth of a mech; a beast that must've the same size as _Grimlock_ of all beings. He was massive, with heavily armored shoulders and thick plated armor. It was a creature with a dense casing of white, sickly green and acidic purple. His face was half covered by a battle mask, and his optics were covered by a sole, dull red visor.

"Ok, so tank, space ship, gun, and now mech. That is four things. Since when were there quadruple changers? I call hacks," Sideswipe commented listlessly before patching on to his and Sunstreaker's private link.

The message he sent Sunstreaker was not as rock steady in tone as his out loud commentary._ 'Sunstreaker. We are royally screwed. I think I know who this is. We needed help ten minutes ago.'_

Sunstreaker grimaced. He knew too. The fourth transformation gave it away.

"You are quite amusing, Sideswipe," said the monster.

"I aim to please," Sideswipe spat back, keeping up the air of lackadaisical confidence despite the rare trepidation Sunstreaker knew his brother was feeling. "It's part of my natural charm." '_Ok. As much as I hate admitting that we need backup, we need backup. Patch to the Ark.'_

Sunstreaker frowned. He hated asking for help but this was not a case where pride would serve them well. If this mech was who he thought, he was not going to risk his own life or his brother's in an unaided fight.

So he tried contacting the Ark.

Nothing got through. There was white noise.

'_Sideswipe, we have a problem.'_

'_Oh, great. Let me guess. Communications blocked?'_

'_How did you know?'_ Sunstreaker asked sarcastically.

'_Twin psychic intuition or some slag that. Keep trying. Maybe there's a blind spot in whatever's jamming the signal.'_

"I know all about you two," the beast-mech thing said with some amount of glee in his voice. "Your reputations precede you. Both great warriors. This is somewhat of a treat for me. You see I just arrived and need to stretch the metaphorical wings, but you both are not the opponents I was expecting. Not that this is a bad thing. In fact it is quite an honor to be the one privileged to send you both to the great junkyard in the sky. Do not worry. You shall not be forgotten. You shall live forever in the stories they'll tell of this day."

'_Sunny, I think this guy was expecting Prowl and Jazz. We walked into an ambush.'_

'_Try to keep him talking. I'll keep hailing the ARK.' _

"Sorry. That honor is reserved for my physician," Sideswipe retorted, gun still leveled at the monster. "I can _definitely_ tell you're new. Earth Decepticons know Ratchet has dibs."

"Ah, yes. Your medic. I have learned much about him from the databases. In fact I've learned about all of you. I'll be sure to make him a priority target once I get through the both of you."

"Honestly, I'd like to see you try. I'm pretty sure Ratchet scares _Megatron_. But then again we're not really going to let you have the chance."

'_Autobot __Identification code S774-001, patching into Ark priority line alpha. Do you read me?'_

"Silly Autobot. You seem to think you have a choice. You have no idea what you walked into do you?" The Decepticon asked with amusement in his deep voice.

"Duh. Into the slag. Like usual. Occupational hazard."

'_Any luck?'_

'_No.'_

The Decepticon chuckled and took a brazen step forward. The twins held their ground. "You are playing ignorant but I think you know who I am. Like you two I have quite the reputation myself."

'_Ark. This is, Sunstreaker. Do you read?'_

"Look, Man. I have a hard enough time keeping the Seekers straight. I don't have enough processor space to waste on every one of Megatron's lackeys."

'_Sunstreaker, this is definitely Six Shot.'_

"_I know," _Sunstreaker replied over the link numbly.

Six Shot was one of Megatron's most violent generals. Not only was he rumored to have six forms but had been dubbed a single mech army. They had heard stories of Six Shot leveling entire fortified, armed bases on his own. And with his six forms and fast transformation speeds there was no one more skilled at adapting to whatever battle threw at him. He slaughtered everything in his path and few could face him one on one.

Actually if the stories were true, no one could face him one on one.

Two on one didn't exactly tip the odds in their favor.

The Decepticon barked out a laugh. "Oh! I like you. Quite the brave one. Most mechs quake in fear once they see me approach but not you two. Opponents like you both are what make life worth living. This will truly be an honor."

With that the massive mech bull rushed them.

He was huge _and_ he was fast. How was that fair? Crossed Sunstreaker's mind before his body kicked into gear.

The twins reacted, and reflexes were triggered before their minds could catch up. They attacked in tandem.

Their coordination was flawless. When Sunstreaker went high, Sideswipe hit low. When Sideswipe struck right, Sunstreaker attacked left. Their moves were fluid, practiced and devastating.

But nothing got through. Six Shot blocked all of their attacks with infuriating ease.

Sunstreaker tried to punch the fragger in a joint under the arm but the attack was caught. The next thing he knew the scenery was rushing by and he was being whipped into Sideswipe.

The brothers collided with violent force and went sprawling back into the dirt. Sunstreaker recovered best he could and rolled back into a defensive stance. Sideswipe sprang up just as quickly, slightly disoriented.

And just like that The Decepticon was on them again with relentless power and speed. Every strike they blocked rattled their limbs. Every hit they took caused their dense armor to buckle slightly.

Sideswipe jumped and drove both his peds into Six Shot's chest. The attack seemingly made the large mech lose his balance. He tipped backwards. Sunstreaker set to press the slight advantage but then Six Shot was transforming into a tank and the gold warrior had to evade getting a hole punched in his gut from the subsequent shell.

The evasion was followed by a knee to said gut.

Damn, it _was _true. The fragger could transform from one form to the next fast.

Sunstreaker saw stars for a moment and dropped to his knees from the sheer force of the blow. Sideswipe launched at the Decepticon's back to keep him from his brother as Sunstreaker recovered from the attack.

A massive hand reached back and crushed around Sideswipe's forearm. Sideswipe was pulled up, over and slammed into the ground. A massive ped was driven viciously into his chest as Six Shot wrenched Sideswipe's right arm guard completely off his arm. An injured yelp made it past Sideswipe's vocals but it was short.

At least his whole arm wasn't taken off.

Six Shot dropped the crumpled red metal and his own arm began to morph into a wicked looking canon. Said canon was then leveled at Sideswipe's face. There was the low whine of a bolt charging but just before the shot fired off Sunstreaker intervened. He blocked the arm high and jammed an energy blade into a weak plated spot on the Decepticon's side.

Six Shot grunted and took to the air in shuttle mode. He landed some distance away.

Sideswipe wheezed, as Sunstreaker dragged his brother up.

"Sideswipe!" Sunstreaker shook his brother out of his funk, only feeling mildly bad about it. "Arsenal!"

It took Sideswipe a moment to recover but once he realized what Sunstreaker was saying he gave him an odd look that was two parts shock and one part glee. He almost on reflex followed the order but just the tiniest bit of hesitation led him to say, "I thought we agreed that was for emergencies! You know how long it takes to build up something like that?"

"THIS IS A PRIMUS DAMNED EMERGANCY!" He snarled.

Sideswipe didn't need to be told twice. A jolt of energy surged to his fingers as his lock-break program ran for the first time in eons.

To a passerby that didn't understand the way subspace technology worked it probably looked like Sideswipe was tapping air with the tips of his fingers. A tiny dimly lit ripple would be left hanging in the air from the motion and eventually there were several such distortions.

Subspace was like having pockets. The size and functions of the compartments varied but usually soldiers kept spare weapons and energy stored along with basic repair equipment.

Sideswipe had several of these units at his disposal but they weren't filled with basic blasters and soldering irons.

He had enough firepower to level a small city. At the Ark they called it the arsenal and many believed it wasn't nearly as massive as reported. However it was and it was the sole reason why Sideswipe was mobile artillery instead of infantry like his brother. However usually it was locked up and completely impossible to access unless you had the specific codes to activate them.

And so with unholy glee Sideswipe stood proudly behind the wall of distortions he created.

He pulled one tiny little device that looked a lot like a laser pointer out of one of the smaller ripples. He turned it on and aimed a tiny red targeting laser at Six Shot.

"Eat Slag and Die," Sideswipe said jovially and with that the distortions opened and let loose a volley of missiles and rockets all aimed at their foe.

Six Shot didn't move as the torrent of warheads closed in.

There were several subsequent explosions. The twins ducked down and guarded themselves against the blinding light, and shockwave that followed.

When the last of the explosions went off in the distance and the dust began to settle the two looked at each other and shared a smile.

"I think that actually worked," Sunstreaker said with disbelief.

"Prime is going to be so mad at me though." Sideswipe sighed. "But totally worth it. That looked awe-"

Click.

Click, click, whiiiiirr…

Sideswipe's mouth snapped shut.

"Did you hear that?" Sunstreaker hissed. "Tell me you didn't hear that."

"I heard that."

In the distance, visible as the dust cleared, where there should've been a crater there was a new structure. A warship. It clicked again the sides raised like wings. From the added structures several things were launched and at least two dozen lights whistled back high into the air. The lights looked like stars hovering in the afternoon sky.

"No way." Sideswipe gasped in awe, mesmerized by the lights; the lights that were missiles. "No way. I threw everything I had at him."

Sunstreaker shoved at Sideswipe to get him to move. "Go! _RUN_!"

The two fled on foot first before frantically transforming as fast as they could. In their Lamborghini forms they went from 0 to 70 in seconds. A record.

It almost wasn't fast enough.

A wall of fire exploded behind them. Both transformed to better catch themselves, as a violent torrent of wind, rock and fire shattered the land around them. They were blown back a fair distance. Sideswipe's journey ended with him brutally hitting a large rock formation. Sunstreaker wasn't as lucky and the shockwave sent him reeling back farther into the desert.

Sideswipe felt jolted from the blast. His systems were fritzing and trying to get in order. His armor was singed and dented and everything hurt. He spared a thought for Sunstreaker. Sunstreaker, with his dense polymer armor probably hadn't been affected by the heat of the blast but the shrapnel and rubble probably did a number.

He rolled stiffly to his side and then to his knees. He put one hand on the wall of rock in front of him to steady himself but just as he was getting to a stand he felt something lightly brush the back of his helm.

It was a hand. It was caressing the back of his head gently, almost with care, and then that same hand violently slammed Sideswipe's head face first into the rock with tremendous force.

And Sunstreaker, still jarred from his tumble through the dirt, watched as his twin's helmet cracked against the substrate, and recoiled back off from the impact. Sideswipe crumpled at Six Shot's feet. His optics were pale, his expression was dazed and electric blue energon was beginning to pool from the head wound.

"Sideswipe!" he cried and made a mad dash for his twin.

Six Shot's visor brightened for a moment with delight before he turned his sight on Sunstreaker and a great light began to charge from the cannon built into his arm.

Sunstreaker cursed and redirected his trajectory to behind a boulder just as a low electric hum pierced the air and a shard of light cut through where he previously stood. It was the same attack Six Shot had used in his gun form and it too, erupted in an unnatural blue fiery ball of radiation and electricity in the distance.

Sunstreaker grabbed a rifle out of subspace and tried snapping off some shots from behind his cover while avoiding the white hot lasers Six Shot was lobbing at him with sadistic joy.

For the tenth time he tried desperately to hail the Ark.

Only something finally got through.

00000000000000000

'_Autobot Sunstreaker to the Ark. Autobot Sunstreaker to the Ark. Ark do you read me?'_

Jazz held back his sigh of relief and responded. "Hey, Sunny. This is Jazz. What's the prob? We've been kinda worried since we couldn't reach ya and you missed your last check in by-"

"_Requesting back up."_ It had been so long since anyone of the non-officers on the Earth team had sounded so military. The fact that it was coming from Sunstreaker only amplified the gravity of the situation. _"Coordinates are 42.5237° N, 118.4587° W. Send a unit with a medic __**now**__."_

Optimus gently pushed past Jazz toward the main com on Teletraan.

"Sunstreaker. This is Optimus Prime. What is your situation?"

There was a pause filled with the distant sound of an explosion and a pained grunt.

"Sunstreaker?" Optimus queried again with concern.

"_Sorry. We're two to one but still at a severe tactical disadvantage."_

That was chilling. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe should have been more than enough for just one Decepticon.

"Is the enemy a seeker? Are you fighting Megatron?"

"_Negative, Sir. The enemy is Six Shot."_

Everyone's energon ran cold. Six Shot was large, powerful and one of Megatron's most destructive generals. Not even Sunstreaker and Sideswipe could stand up to such a force on their own.

"Sunstreaker, disengage," Optimus ordered.

"_Negative. Unable to disengage the enemy. Requesting backup."_

"That was not a suggestion! That was an order! You and Sideswipe need to disengage."

"_I understand Sir but we are unable to disengage. Under heavy fire. Sideswipe is out of commission but alive."_

The implication was left hanging in the air.

Another explosion sounded in the distance over the line. Everyone tensed.

"_Prime," _Sunstreaker's voice came back much to everyone's relief. It was short lived when they heard the slight crack in Sunstreaker's voice.

" _I'm… I'm by myself."_

"Sunstreaker. Get out of range. Get Sideswipe to safety," Optimus commanded with force in his voice.

"_Unable. We need backup. I'll stall him."_

"Sunstreaker…"

"_Engaging one on one with the enemy."_

"Do not engage! This is an order, DO NOT ENGAGE!" Optimus roared.

"_Prime. I can't leave Sideswipe with that thing."_

The line went dead.

It was the last time anyone heard from Sunstreaker.

00000000000000000000

The line pretty much went dead again right after message went through but he got when he needed to across.

Now all he needed to do was use stall tactics until reinforcements were sent.

He had to get that thing away from his unconscious brother.

He dropped his rifle and did the only thing he could think of. He charged.

He used speed, and evasion tactics as his hit, ducked, and slipped away from Six Shot's own assault. He wasn't making much of an impact on the fragger but he was avoiding being hit as much. To some extent he could tell this frustrated the much larger mech.

He didn't need a win. He just needed to buy time.

"Would you just stay still?" Six Shot roared and grabbed both of Sunstreaker's shoulders before punting him square in the chest. Sunstreaker was blown back from the hit and felt his back crack against rock. A micro second was spared to lament his paint before ducking. He did so just in time to miss the fist aimed for his head. From that lower position he also managed to kick Six Shot's feet from under him causing the Decepticon to collapse. He pulled out an energy blade and made slit the bastard's throat but it was futile. Six Shot lashed out at him and knocked him off and away before taking flight and creating distance.

With a gap of space between them both readied themselves. Sunstreaker dropped down into a defensive stance ready to snap. But his focus was broken.

He heard a sound.

Both he and Six Shot turned to look at the source.

Sideswipe was getting up and Sunstreaker could only watch in horror.

Energon was dripping down Sideswipe's face from the horrific crack in his helm, and he was shaking as he tried to get his limbs to support his body. Slowly he dragged his peds so they were set under him on solid ground and he struggle to pull himself into a hunched stand.

And Six Shot was staring at Sideswipe with mild fascination as if just remembering the fact that he had been there at all.

'_No. __**No**__. Stay Down.'_ Sunstreaker pleaded over their private line. '_Please, Sideswipe. Stay down.'_

But his brother didn't respond. Sunstreaker wasn't even sure Sideswipe could hear him. He looked disoriented, barely balanced enough to stand. Sideswipe was blearily looking at the ground, staring at the small electric blue puddle forming from the drip of his own wound. His arms were out slightly as he tried to find balance.

Sunstreaker was tense, too afraid to move as if doing so would trigger something horrible. He was too far from Sideswipe and equally far from Six Shot.

Six Shot was just as still, fixated on the injured red warrior before him. If any part of his face were visible contemplation would most likely be seen.

"Well that is just _sad_," Six Shot shattered the silence. "A warrior he is for certain, but already the fight is gone. I'll give him an honorable end at the very least."

And that is when the light began to charge again. That horrible blinding, radioactive light from the cannon mounted in his arm.

"SIDESWIPE!"

Sunstreaker could not do a damned thing. He was too far to be able to redirect the shot as he had done before.

He didn't give it a second thought before he took off running toward Sideswipe's direction instead, nearly slipping on the dirt in his haste.

He heard the low thrum of energy as the cannon gained power.

Sunstreaker was too far. He needed to be _closer_.

It fired. Blue-white light ripped across the sky, distorting the air.

Sunstreaker reached Sideswipe's side, reached out too his dazed and hurt brother, and pulled him between himself and the incoming charge.

Sunstreaker was facing his brother; his back was to the gun. He could feel the heat.

Once long ago one of his creators, a femme named Mercuria, told Sunstreaker that his armor was special. That it was a dense polymer alloy made to withstand even the most violent of heats.

Well one way to test that claim.

He had a split moment to look dead into his beloved brother's unfocused optics.

So many things to say.

No time.

"Sideswi-!"

There was an impact. He felt white hot pain, the collision as he was slammed into Sideswipe, and odd satisfaction that maybe Sideswipe would have a fighting chance.

Then there was blackness.


	7. Chapter 1 part 2

Jazz continued to drum his fingers against the console much to Prowl's annoyance.

"Something bothering you Jazz?" He asked.

"Huh?"

"You seem distracted."

"Nah, just bored. Sunny was supposed to check in a little while ago and I'm just waiting for the ping."

Prowl paused. "They missed their check in?"

"By just two minutes. If I don't hear from them in another two I'll give em a ring."

"Knowing Sideswipe, he probably got distracted."

"Usually, I'd say you're spot on but Sunny's managing the com helm today. I think he's still mad at me for makin' them wait this mornin'."

"Well if you weren't a chronic procrastinator perhaps you would have more of my sympathy," Prowl remarked flatly.

"Hey. I'll have ya know that according to some human studies, procrastination is healthy." Jazz crossed his arms, leaned back in the chair and pouted.

"Oh, really?"

"Yup. It just means I naturally thrive in an atmosphere of drama and urgency. And it's not like it's all the time. Think of it as extra recharge time."

"Doing things at the eleventh hour is not always smart, Jazz."

"Ah, whatever. We could talk about this all day but it won't make no difference." Jazz sighed and poked at the com again. "Really though, what are those two doin'?"

"It's possible that they finally met up with Mirage and are going over the data he collected."

"Ya really think they'd care enough to do that?" Jazz asked skeptically.

Prowl thought about it. "In hindsight I realize that was a foolish statement."

Jazz laughed. "More than likely Sunny fell asleep. I'd think they'd at least let me know if there was any sign of Mirage."

"Why? Did you need me for something?"

"Just to collect the plans detailing that mine before-" Jazz stopped midsentence and did a spit take.

Prowl whirled around so fast his door wings scraped the wall.

Standing bemused at the door was Mirage. The regal mech looked about as confused as the two officers felt.

"Mirage!" Jazz exclaimed in surprise. "What're ya doin' back _here_? I thought ya wanted to meet at the desert! Man, I've had Sunny and Sides out there for the last hour. They are _not _gonna be too happy 'bout this."

Mirage blinked an excruciatingly slow blink. "What are you talking about?"

"Do you have the data on that energon mine?" Prowl queried.

Mirage turned his attention to Prowl looking more puzzled by the second. "What?"

"The mine," Prowl elaborated.

Mirage stared at him uncomprehendingly.

'_This does not bode well',_ was the thought that briefly crossed Prowl's mind.

Jazz too was starting to get worried. "Mirage, where've ya been?"

"I've been in California. I was picking up a delivery of rare Earth metals for Wheeljack since Slingshot couldn't be bothered to do it. How is it that I always get stuck with other mechs grunt work? Really, it is absolutely beyond me."

"Wait." Prowl pinched his brow between thumb and forefinger as he collected his thought. He dropped his hand and motioned at Mirage. "Wait. At approximately 0400 hours we received a message from _you_, requesting Jazz and I to collect intel you collected before you went back into the field."

"Nooo," Mirage started slowly. "At 0400 hours I sent you a message saying I was on route back to base and I would be a couple of hours. I wasn't doing recon."

The three mechs stood in the heavy silence.

"Prowl," Jazz finally managed, keeping a tenuous hold on the growing worry he was feeling. "That message we received must've been corrupted. I think we fell for a Decepticon plant."

Prowl's optics hardened. "Jazz. We let the twins walk into a trap."

Not a beat was spared.

Jazz nearly tripped over his own feet as he flew back to the main com. In a flurry of activity he began to hail the brothers.

"Autobot S774 one or Autobot S774 two, this is the ARK. Do you read me?" Jazz requested.

There was no response.

"Mirage. Get me Blaster, and Prime. We may have an emergency on our hands," Prowl ordered calmly.

"Yes, Sir." And with that Mirage took off in search of the aforementioned mechs.

"S774-001, this is the ARK. You've missed you're check in. Please respond," Jazz tried once more.

Still radio silence.

He kept his optics on the com as he addressed Prowl, "They're bein' blocked. I can't get a signal."

"Do we have their coordinates?"

Jazz checked the original message received from who they had _thought_ was Mirage. However when he pulled the request up the file was corrupted and unreadable.

"Nope. No we definitely do not. However I know they were headed for the High Desert."

"That's a 30,000 square mile wide area. Can we narrow it down?"

"They were last an hour's drive from our current position. They should be in the North western area."

"Keep hailing them."

Suddenly Blaster was there and he was vaulting himself toward the Com-line. Optimus Prime was barreling into the room as well.

"Hey, Blaster. The radios are being blocked. Help me force a signal through. There's gotta be a frequency not being blocked," Jazz requested, voice a steely calm.

He _did_ work well under pressure.

"Right-O. Soundwave the culprit today or is it just Casseticon interference?" Blaster asked as he jacked himself into the system.

"Not sure. Casseticons don't usually give me this much trouble so I'm thinkin' the big gun has a handle on this one."

"Prowl. What has happened?" Optimus asked with concern.

"The Decepticons left a false message for us and lead us to believe that Mirage was requesting a meet up for a data exchange," Prowl explained, the epitome of professionalism. "We have since then learned that was not the case, but we had already sent Sunstreaker and Sideswipe in the field. We have not been able to get a hold of them."

Optimus Prime's optics flashed grimly. He walked to Teletraan where Jazz and Blaster were frantically attempting to either jam whatever was jamming the twin's radio, or to force a signal of their own through. He pressed a button and activated the ark PA system.

"Autobot's, this Optimus Prime. We may have an emergency situation. I want Skyfire, Ratchet, Inferno and Skydive ready on standby for departure. Wait for coordinates and my signal. Act with haste."

He ended the hail. Other then the sounds of Blaster and Jazz typing furiously the room went quiet.

The next five minutes were excruciating as attempt after attempt failed to get through.

_Ping_

"Whoa, what was that?" Blaster paused. "I think I heard something. Go back to that last frequency."

The two Autobots worked in tandem before locking on the previous frequency.

"Magnifying the signal. Attempting to establish connection," Jazz noted before executing the coded command.

For a moment there was only white noise. But then there was a voice.

'_Autobot Sunstreaker to the Ark. Autobot Sunstreaker to the Ark. Ark do you read me?'_

Everyone almost sighed in relief. Prowl should've known that the twin brothers could handle anything thrown their way, but radio silence was never something to be taken likely.

"Hey, Sunny. This is Jazz. What's the prob? We've been kinda worried since we couldn't reach ya and you missed your last check in by-"

"_Requesting back up."_

Ok, Prowl thought. Maybe their situation was worse than previously thought.

"_Coordinates are 42.5237° N, 118.4587° W. Send a unit with a medic __**now**__."_

Optimus gently pushed past Jazz toward the main com on Teletraan.

"Sunstreaker," their leader started evenly, "this is Optimus Prime. What is your situation?"

There was a pause filled with the distant sound of an explosion and a pained grunt.

"Sunstreaker?" Optimus queried again with concern.

"_Sorry. We're two to one but still at a severe tactical disadvantage."_

What? That did not compute to Prowl. Save for Megatron and a select few others, there were no Decepticons that came to mind that could overpower both the twins in combat. Especially not without back up.

"Is the enemy a seeker? Are you fighting Megatron?" Optimus asked, his mind taking a similar train of thought.

"_Negative, Sir," _Sunstreaker reported._ "The enemy is Six Shot."_

Everyone's energon ran cold. Six Shot was large, powerful and one of Megatron's most destructive generals. Not even Sunstreaker and Sideswipe could stand up to such a force on their own.

"Sunstreaker, disengage," Optimus immediately ordered.

"_Negative. Unable to disengage the enemy. Requesting backup."_

"That was not a suggestion!" Prime's voice was taking a tone of urgency. "That was an order! You and Sideswipe need to disengage."

"_I understand, Sir, but we are unable to disengage. Under heavy fire. Sideswipe is out of commission but alive."_

The implication was left hanging in the air.

Another explosion sounded in the distance over the line. Everyone tensed.

"_Prime," _Sunstreaker's voice came back much to everyone's relief. It was short lived when they heard the slight crack in Sunstreaker's voice.

" _I'm… I'm by myself."_

"Sunstreaker. Get out of range. Get Sideswipe to safety," Optimus commanded with force.

"_Unable. We need backup. I'll stall him."_

"Sunstreaker…"

"_Engaging one on one with the enemy."_

"Do not engage! This is an order, DO NOT ENGAGE!" Optimus roared in frustration.

"_Prime. I can't leave Sideswipe with that thing."_

The line went dead.

Optimus Prime hit the PA button so hard he nearly dented the little mechanism into the wall.

"We have a level one emergency. I want all medics, in addition to Bluestreak, and Brawn ready to depart! Coordinates are _42.5237° N, 118.4587° W. _Be prepared to leave immediately!" He bellowed. Afterwards, he turned to Prowl.

"Prowl, you're with me. Jazz, stay on the com. We'll need you and Blaster to maintain an open radio. Do not let the signals be jammed again. Understand me?"

"Yes, Prime," Jazz answered dourly.

And with that Optimus was moving with haste. Prowl almost had to run to keep up with his large commander.

"Optimus, I understand that the rumors of Six Shot are rather grim but do we really need so many for just one mech?" He asked quietly.

"If it truly is Six Shot then this is a confrontation that must be nipped in the bud," Optimus growled. "I have seen this mech. He was responsible for the destruction of Pax Amora and the deaths of several Autobots. If we have an opportunity to remove this threat with little interference from the Decepticons we need to take it now. We need to get Sunstreaker and Sideswipe aid as quickly as possible."

Prowl said nothing further and simply took longer strides to keep up with his commander.

0000000000000

The trip to the coordinates took Skyfire only about ten minutes but it felt like an eternity to Prowl. Every few minutes he would check back with Jazz to see if the Special Ops had made any more contact with the Lamborghini brothers. He hadn't.

Eventually they reached their intended location, the only heads up being an, "Oh Primus." From Skyfire as the shuttle touched down.

"What in the fracking hell?" Skydive's unnaturally horrified sounding voice flitted through the com line. He had flown along side of Skyfire and also probably was getting to survey the battle field first hand.

The Bots exited the Flyer and were promptly gob smacked by terrain.

It was a nightmare.

The ground was broken and scorched. There were deep pock marks and shrapnel from heavy shelling. There were craters and fires and just so much destruction. Smoke and dust was still curling on the desert wind.

Wheeljack was the first to comment, "I'm not sure what was used but the radiation levels in this area are off the charts, Prime."

"I'm not seeing the twins or Six Shot sir," Skyfire reported quietly. "I didn't see them from the sky either."

"Do you think they could've been taken prisoner?" Bluestreak asked quietly. The gunner looked seriously disturbed by the sight and Prowl could only imagine the bad memories the devastation must've been triggering in his mind.

Prime said nothing.

Instead from subspace he pulled out a massive silver, cybertanium axe.

"Autobots, spread out and look for Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. Keep your guard up. If you run into Six Shot do not engage. He has ground, air, beast and heavy artillery forms. Send a distress signal and wait for aid. This is an order."

The bots nodded. Skyfire and Slingshot took back to the sky. Each was heading toward a smoldering crater. There were quite a few to choose from.

Prowl didn't even know where to begin. There were no signs of the twins' signals but then again _none _of the Autobot's signals were easily felt. Something was still jamming the area and the radiation was interfering with their systems on top of that.

The Autobots already began to spread out so he simply choose a direction no one else was heading toward and drove.

And so he drove for what felt like another eternity.

A shard of light reflecting off the desert sand caught his attention. He went to investigate and came upon a piece of crumpled red. He transformed and paused to closer examine the mangled metal.

It was the remains of Sideswipe arm guard.

He looked ahead. In the distance barely on the horizon in the direction of the highway he could see a plume of smoke rising into the sky.

He really hoped he wasn't on the right path, though logic was telling him he was.

"Ratchet," he hailed the com. "I think I may have found something. Head my way."

"_Fine. You'd better be right,"_ was the curt response. The medic had been on edge the entire trip and had seemed ready to snap. Prowl was sympathetic and didn't read much into the lack of respect shown.

The plume of smoke was getting closer. He could now see it must've at one point been a building. Probably a diner or truck spot at one point. It now looked to be a smoldering pile of rubble.

He could hear a jukebox still playing.

"_Don't be like the one who made me so old  
Don't be like the one who left behind his name  
'Cause they're waiting for you like I waited for mine  
And nobody ever came..."_

He transformed and approached the broken structure with caution, and his gun raised. He needed to be thorough but could not afford to spare more time than necessary. Time was of the essence.

He carefully made his way through the rubble and devastation. The smoke was thick and it was hard to see. Despite his best efforts at stealth glass and scorched wood would snap and crackle under every step.

He about gave up on searching through the wreckage when suddenly he saw something.

He dropped his gun.

It was something that he had imagined on occasion however it was never something he thought he'd actually see. And it was vastly more horrific than anything he ever could have come up with.

He found the twins.

The damage was absolutely devastating.

There was a hole in Sunstreaker's back. The charred lip of the wound still glowed, and crackled with heat.

No, not a hole. A chasm. A black chasm that had hollowed out the warrior's torso. There was nothing. No spark, no delicate internals, no wires, nothing. It was empty space until the inside of his chest plate. Even _that _was burned but had remained intact. Sunstreaker's usually nigh indestructible dense polymer armor was still smoldering and red hot.

"Sweet, Primus," Prowl reeled back in horror as his own assessment sunk in.

No spark.

Sunstreaker was dead.

And there was Sideswipe. His leg was twisted grotesquely. His helmet was cracked nearly in half. His armor ashy, and broken. He was bleeding. Primus he was bleeding so much.

But then he noticed some things he hadn't. Tiny yet monumentally significant things.

He noticed the dim, flickering glow behind Sideswipe's dust covered optics. He noticed the fact that the energon pooling from the warrior's wounds was still charged and electric blue instead of dark and expended. He noticed that even though the warrior's armor was ashen and almost colorless the faintest hint of a sun bleached red hue remained.

"Oh, Primus. Sideswipe, _you're_ alive," he was honestly in shock. "Primus, you're alive."

He was not prepared for this.

Prowl scrambled closer to them and dropped to his knees. He raised a (not shaking. It couldn't have been shaking) hand and reached to touch Sideswipe's shoulder. Gently he applied pressure. "Sideswipe. Sideswipe, Can you hear me?"

No response.

Prowl hailed the com.

"Ratchet. I've found them. Get here now. Sideswipe's badly hurt."

"_What's wrong? Can you give me specifics?"_

"The worst I can see is done to his leg, and cranium but the overall damage is extensive. He needs help now."

A brief pause. Then, _"Keep him calm. I'm close to your position and I'll be there before you can blink."_

The line went quiet.

Prowl stared at the young warrior.

Keep him calm? Was he even awake? Prowl certainly hoped not. The pain was probably unbearable. Sideswipe looked barely alive.

A better condition than his brother though.

"Sideswipe," Prowl whispered, cleared his throat and tried again. "Sideswipe," he said a bit firmer.

No response. He wasn't expecting one.

"It is going to be-" he stopped himself before he could say 'okay'. It didn't matter how dire the situation was. He wasn't a liar. "Ratchet is going to be here soon. If you hold on he can probably fix you. You're strong Sideswipe. You have it in you to hold on."

Prowl wanted to smack himself. He sounded god-awful. He was terrible at this comforting business. Primus, where was Ratchet?

"Please hold on. You are a good soldier. We still need you. Do not let the Decepticon's win. You can still come out on top. You can settle the score but you have to hold on for Ratchet. He's going to be here soon."

Where was Ratchet?

The sounds of tires screeching slowing encroached past the sounds of crackling glass and burning wood. He heard the medic transform and start to slog through the wreckage to reach their position with as much haste as he could manage.

"Prowl! Has his condition chan-"

Prowl turned just in time to see Ratchet look blindsided. His expression upon seeing Sideswipe was total shock but something else had caught the Doctor's optics that made him completely blank out reality.

And Prowl realized then he made a mistake. An uncharacteristically massive mistake.

He forgot to mention Sunstreaker.

"Sunstreaker," Ratchet wheezed. "He's- you didn't tell me."

"I'm sorry. Sideswipe was-"

"Never mind," Ratchet grit out bitterly. "We'll have time to let this slam us upside the head later when we can drown ourselves in high grade. Priority is Sideswipe."

To most Ratchet at that moment probably sounded despicably callous. Prowl recognized it for what it really was though: strength and a type of professionalism that had saved countless lives.

Ratchet quickly picked over the ruble and made it to Prowl's side. Prowl was so zoned in on the mass of devastation that was the Lamborghini twins that he didn't realize Ratchet had been speaking to him again until the good doctor snatched both sides of his helmet.

"PROWL!" Ratchet roared as he reeled him in. They locked optics. "FOCUS! Focus on the living!"

The medic's voice was hoarse and his voice cracked ever so slightly when he spoke that last word.

Prowl nodded. He needed to get professional too. Ratchet was right. Emotions could come later. He shook off the temporary shock and began acting like the second command of the Autobot army.

Prowl let out a strangled grunt as he tried to pry Sunstreaker's body off of Sideswipe.

It eventually took their combined efforts to drag the lifeless shell off of his brother. Their armor scraped and crumbled as the two broke apart. Sunstreaker had taken the brunt of whatever had done this but his smoldering chest plate had still severely burned and tenuously fused to Sideswipe's.

Ratchet dropped straight to Sideswipe's side and he surveyed the damage with his brand of crude yet professional finesse.

"Crap. Crap, crap damn it to mother fricken hell crap! He has a cerebral bleed, lacerations of the arms torso, legs, and, oh Vector Sigma, his whole damn body is a wound."

"Can you fix him?" Prowl almost hesitated to ask.

"I don't know," Ratchet answered truthfully. "I don't know but I definitely can't do it here. We need to move him."

Ratchet's hand's ghosted over Sideswipe's broken helm before he accessed his own com. "Wheeljack, I need you and Perceptor on standby. Head our way as fast as you can. We have severely wounded."

'_Gotcha! We'll get Skyfire to give us a lift.' _Wheeljack answered back.

Ratchet turned back to Prowl. "Grab an arm."

The both grabbed limb.

"Ready. Heave!"

The two hefted the warrior up best they could, cringing as loose parts broke away from Sideswipe's body. They settled so each had one of Sideswipe's arms slung over their shoulders. It was awkward, and Sideswipe was much taller than them but they could manage.

They had to.

"We need to get away from this wreckage."

"Ratchet. He's bleeding a lot."

"I know, just keep going."

So the two dragged him as quickly as they could across the field. Everything felt eerily quiet. The smoldering building in the background was barely white noise. The sounds of their legs pistons working overtime, the scrape of Sideswipe's knees as they dragged across the ground and the horrendous trickling of fluids from Sideswipe's wounds blasted in their audios.

"This should not have happened," Prowl tried rationalizing. "It was not supposed to be _them_. It would've been Jazz and me. We never should have believed that plant."

"If it were you and Jazz I guarantee we wouldn't be picking survivors out of the dirt, Prowl. Sideswipe's too stupid to die."

"We believed bad information. We believed a plant. If he dies it'll be on me. Sunstreaker's already-"

"You didn't do this, Prowl!" Ratchet snarled at the tactician never letting up his pace. "If he dies it's not on you! It's on the Decepticons! We can't save Sunstreaker but I'll be damned if I let Sideswipe go without a fight! So, please just focus on the task at hand. I can't be doing this with you now!"

They continued the trek in silence.

Until there was a sickening rattle and Sideswipe's left leg all but disintegrated below the knee. His shin and foot broke away from the rest of his leg. New fluids splashed onto the ground as wires and tubes still attached spilled from his knee after the missing pieces.

The grisly limb dragged noisily behind them before both stopped in a panic.

"Ratchet?"

"Hold him up."

With one clean stroke of the laser scalpel Ratchet disconnected the remaining connecting wires effectively severing the pieces from what remained of Sideswipe's leg.

"Let's go."

They dragged him farther out. The sound of thrusters took the place of the silence and they could see Skyfire.

"Stop, stop, stop," Ratchet tripped to a stop, forcing Prowl to hold up as well. "Help me set him down here."

They lowered the mech to the ground and softly as they could. A new puddle of energon was slowly beginning to pool under Sideswipe. "I need to stabilize him."

Skyfire touched down. Perceptor and Wheeljack got off the shuttle and were dashing for Ratchet. But when they caught sight of the mangled warrior both recoiled in horror.

"Primus almighty!" Wheeljack screeched in horror.

"Quick gawking and start being useful! We need to stabilize him now!" Ratchet snarled.

They nodded and dropped next to the injured. With that the medics furiously started their work and Prowl could only stand back and watch helplessly.

Skyfire transformed and stared at the broken soldier. Absolute devastation was on his face. He made to reach toward Sideswipe but instead his fingers curled back into a fist and he dropped his arms.

They were friends weren't they? Prowl realized. Sideswipe did dig the shuttle out of the ice a few years back so it was logical in a way that the two would spend time together but he never expected to see Skyfire look so broken.

Sideswipe had a way with people. Better then Sun-

Prowl severed that thought.

Skyfire eventually looked away from Sideswipe and instead made for Prowl.

"Good work, Skyfire. Your haste in this situation may have been the thing that saves Sideswipe's life today," Prowl told the shuttle, though his focus was still on Sideswipe. His voice was cold, masking everything else he was feeling.

Slowly more vehicles approached in the distance. The rest of the Autobot team and Prime were slowly closing in on their position.

"Where's Sunstreaker?" Skyfire asked, voice shaking.

Prowl's optics snapped up toward the Shuttle. He didn't answer. He looked back toward the rubble in the distance.

Skyfire followed his gaze. His optics widened and he looked once more at Prowl as if for confirmation of something awful.

Prowl's silence was all the verification he needed. Skyfire was a smart mech. It didn't take much for him to figure out what was missing from the picture.

Skyfire turned back to the rubble in the distance. He took a few steps and then suddenly the massive mech look set to run for the wreckage but Prowl blocked his path.

"No, Skyfire," he said quietly, gently. "We will have to do that at a future time. Sideswipe is going to need transport the second Ratchet deems him fit for travel and you must be _here._"

Skyfire nodded numbly and simply dropped to the ground in a sit. He brought his knees to his chest, crossed his arms around his legs and watched the medical work being done on his friend.

Even sitting he was as tall as Prowl.

A loud curse from Ratchet snapped Prowl's attention from the momentary distraction back to the medical team.

"Stop the bleeding," Ratchet ordered. "He'll be exsanguinated before we can save him. We have to stop as much of the bleeding as we can."

"Ratchet, the major components in his legs are decimated. Oh what, am I saying? His leg is _gone_! Ratch', we can't fix this on the field! He's-"

"-Not stable yet! Shut up and stop that from sparking!" Ratchet spat with vehemence.

Perceptor winced as one the sparks caught his finger tips. Static crackled across Sideswipe's helm. "There is quite a lot of electrical discharge in his cranial area."

Ratchet looked to the region aforementioned and noticed something odd with Sideswipes optics. They were still milky and pale but were looking less lavender and were taking on a more redish tone.

Horror swept across the medic's face.

"Damn it. Cover his eyes!" Ratchet shrieked.

Wheeljack asked no questions and slapped his hands over Sideswipe's optics at first believing it was to keep the soldier from seeing his own wounds. A few seconds later he learned that wasn't the case.

Suddenly light was visible reflecting between Wheeljack's fingers and around the bottom of his hands. And as soon as it came it was gone. And it was dark.

And it was wet.

Rivulets of softly glowing pink liquid dripped from beneath Wheeljack's hands, trailing in spidery streams , dripping to Sideswipe's chin, pulling toward his nose, guided by the seams on his cheeks and the natural soft contours of his face.

It looked like he was crying but the Cybertronian race was incapable of crying. The jewel like streams meant something much more sinister.

"He has a cerebral bleed," was Perceptor's horrified assessment.

At this point the others had arrived and were now standing a respectful distance from the medics. They were all watching in horror at the mess that was Sideswipe and the frantic efforts to save him. Bluestreak was gaping, for once speechless. Brawn and Inferno were mystified almost not comprehending the state Sideswipe was in. Even Skydive looked grim.

How did this happen? Sideswipe was supposed to be so strong. How could one Decepticon do this?

Optimus was the last to arrive and when he transformed he stood stone still.

Most of his face was covered by his battle mask but Prowl could see the devastation in his optics.

Optimus cared for all of his soldiers. He shouldered the blame for every loss and every misfortune that befell or would befall his troops.

He would take personally responsibility if anything happened to Sideswipe, as he would with any of his men. But Prowl knew that expression was not just for Sideswipe. Not just for Sunstreaker. It was for all of them.

If this had happened to the _twins_, the rest of the Autobot forces were in for something terrible in the future. The balance of power had finally been tipped.

"No. No!" Ratchet all but screamed as he shoved Wheeljack away from the red mech. To the other's horror he began ripping at Sideswipe's chest plate, barely giving the latches and locks time to release before he tore the armor away.

"Ratch, What are you-"

"It's not just a cerebral bleed! It's the wrong color!"

A mechs spark was like a heart. It provided a charge to the energon that flowed through a mechs body and kept them energized. The color of this vital life liquid, when recently charged, was usually similar to the color of the spark. It should have been blue. Pink meant it wasn't getting a strong charge.

Sideswipe's spark box was revealed. After a second of fiddling the compartment, though strained, Ratchet managed to open revealing the most delicate and precious peace of any Cybertronian's being.

Sideswipe was a strapping, young mech. For all intents and purposes his spark should have been blue-white, and bright, and strong.

It shouldn't have been a sickly slow, expanding red ball growing ever dimmer, ever weaker.

The old blue fluids dripping from Sideswipe's wounds were no longer vibrant and glowing, having lost their charge. The sluggish new corrupted energon bleeding from his optics was growing dimmer by the second.

Wheeljack and Perceptor froze.

"His spark is red," Perceptor said sadly. "There's nothing we can do."

"Like hell there's not!"

"Ratchet. We can't fix that!"

"Then get the _fuck out of my way_!" Ratchet ferociously shoved Wheeljack away and brought out two pronged tools. He held each metal device, with their rounded plate like tips, on either side of Sideswipe's dying spark.

"Charging!" a raw electrical charge crackled at the tips of the device.

The electrical pulse discharged between the rods, passing through and around the spark giving it a shock of raw energy. The concentrated power coursed through Sideswipe's spark causing it to pulse and flash for a brief second. Excess sparks danced across Sideswipe frame.

Nothing changed. The spark still got redder. Still got dimmer.

"Again. Charging!"

The rods whined as the energy built up.

_Jolt. _

Nothing.

"Ratchet," Perceptor began consolingly. He made to reach for Ratchet's shoulder but the white mech violently shrugged him off.

"I will not let him die like _Sunstreaker_!" He snarled, ignoring the sounds of shock that came from the other Autobots.

But the second that last word left his lips, Sideswipe's spark pulsed. Slowly the sphere of light began to condense. Its color began to morph from deathly red to a sickly yellow.

The three were absolutely dumbfounded.

"Did his spark just," Wheeljack searched for the words, "did it just stabilize itself?"

"By the All Spark," Perceptor was equally perplexed. "That is impossible. How is this possible?"

Ratchet's mouth tightened to a grim line and he began reattaching what was left of Sideswipe mangled chest plate. "We have to get him to base or he'll die."

"What? But, Ratch, what just-?"

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Ready him for transport," he ordered, voice steadier then it had been just a few moments ago.

"He's not stable enough for the trip," Perceptor asserted and he was probably right.

"He has to be. Prime! I need you! Carry him, and keep him steady. Load him on to Skyfire!"

Skyfire, hearing his name, transformed immediately.

Prowl watched as Optimus Prime carefully knelt next to his fallen warrior. He watched as Optimus gently slid his arms under Sideswipe legs and shoulders before softly lifting the broken soldier. He handled him as if he were glass.

"Hang on, Sideswipe," Optimus said quietly, voice almost too low to hear. "You'll be ok."

Optimus wasn't a liar either, Prowl thought.

He certainly hoped that remained true.


	8. Chapter 7

_Seven days ago_

Skyfire had been sitting at the doors to the medical bay for about forty five minutes.

Although he was not an active combatant that did not mean he shied away from the battle field. There were plenty of times where he transported the Autobots or vital equipment under heavy fire or duress. Also he often played a support role in the war that put him in harm's way. It could be scary at times but had enough bravery suck it up and play his part.

But he couldn't get the courage to walk through the doors before him.

It was kind of pathetic really.

Skyfire sighed, leaned against the wall and drew his knees up.

"Oh, Skyfire!"

He looked up and saw Bluestreak waving wildly at him. The little Datsun jogged the last few steps until he was right in front of the shuttle. Even when Bluestreak was standing while Skyfire was sitting the two of them were about optic level with each other.

"Hello, Bluestreak," he greeted warmly. "What brings you this way?" he asked despite probably knowing the answer.

Bluestreak scratched the back of head sheepishly and stared at the doors to Medical. "I heard Sideswipe just got up. Have you seen him yet?"

Skyfire let out a sigh and let his head drop in shame. "I've been trying to get the courage to go in."

"Oh. Well that's understandable. Totally, and completely understandable. I mean I've headed in this direction about six times today but I always found myself veering off or getting distracted by something else. But I finally kicked my tailpipe into gear and here I am!" He splayed his arms out to his sides as if to present himself and grinned widely.

He made no effort to move from where he stood.

Skyfire raised a brow. "Are you going in?"

Bluestreak visibly deflated, the smile wilted off his face.

"Uh yeah, I just…" he scratched the back of his head looking unsure. "I just- I'm not sure what I want to say yet."

"Well that is also understandable." Skyfire nodded sagely. "That is actually most likely why I am still out here as well."

Bluestreak stared at the door, his entire form stiff with obvious discomfort.

"Bluestreak?" Skyfire questioned.

"Uh well maybe…" He fidgeted. "Hey, Skyfire. Can… Could I maybe talk to you first? I just- I don't deal with thoughts on my own well. But talking it through sometimes helps. Maybe if I actually think and figure out what I want to say first I won't make a complete idiot of myself. I don't think Sideswipe needs one of my foot in mouth moments right now."

"Of course, Bluestreak." The shuttle scoot over a bit pat the spot next to where he was seated.

The young gunner seemed relieved from not being turned away, dropped and planted himself to the spot.

For a moment the two sat in a silence that was far more comfortable for Skyfire then it was for Bluestreak and it showed. A part of the gunner was always moving whether he was drumming his fingers or fidgeting his foot. But as he had said it seemed to be taking a while for him to find the words. It was odd for him.

"So what is it you are trying to express?" Skyfire coaxed, trying to help Bluestreak find a starting point.

After a moment the younger mech finally bit his lip before actually beginning to speak.

"I don't know yet. I wanna make sure Sideswipe is ok, but I already know he's not. I mean I can barely wrap my head around everything that's happened. It's just, they were always there you know?" He waved as he spoke for emphasis. "Whenever any of us were in a tight spot or needed saving they would just appear out of nowhere. But it wasn't just that. It was _the way_ they did it. It didn't matter if it was a small firefight or Devastator raining holy hell on our heads, they always just had this attitude like they didn't_ care. _That it was no big deal. Sometimes it was easy to forget just how much aid they were giving us simply because they'd make light of the situation or would treat it like a joke. But it was contagious because even if you were scared for some reason, they just made you feel like maybe the situation wasn't so _bad_. Maybe it wasn't so out of control and then it would help you relax.

Skyfire nodded, letting the young soldier gather his thoughts before resuming his verbalizing.

"And Sunstreaker," Bluestreak said voice a little more frantic as he got himself more worked up. "I've always _liked_ Sunstreaker. But I know there aren't really a lot of mechs who got along with him well. There was always talk that if it weren't for Sideswipe he'd be the most likely Autobot to defect. And some even went so far as to say he didn't even care about Sideswipe. But…. You don't throw yourself in front of enemy fire for someone you don't like. And even if he didn't necessarily like you he'd still be there to pull your aft out of the fire! And him being gone doesn't… it doesn't make sense. I mean he wasn't the easiest mech to get along with so it's understandable I guess, but even though there were a bunch of bots that would always talk bad about him and stuff and made it seemed like they hated him, it's affecting everyone. Did you know Tracks of all mechs has been on a hair-trigger for the last week? The littlest things are setting him off and usually nothing fazes him that much. Mirage has been quieter than normal. Hound's been downtrodden. And do you know what happened when _Snarl _found out what happened? He nearly wrecked the rec room! It took Swoop, Grimlock, and Wheeljack to calm him down! I mean just, Jeez, out of everyone I thought would be upset Dinobots were not high on my list."

The words were tumbling out faster, with more fervor. Bluestreak was frantically gesticulating at this point talking equally with his hands as he did with his mouth. "And I think everyone's kinda scared because, well, _Six Shot_," he said the name as if it was all the explanation needed and truly it was. "We still have to deal with_ that_ and now we have to do it without Sunstreaker. And I think everyone is seeing just how much he looked out for us! He'd bemoan his paint, or his finish or about us being obnoxious but that never stopped him from stepping up to the plate when he was needed, ya know? But despite how much he saved us, or had our backs, we never really returned the favor. Maybe it was because some didn't really like him or maybe we all simply figured he didn't need it. He and Sideswipe were a_ force_. But we let them down. We let Sideswipe down. They needed us and we weren't there. I know what the Cons did was sneaky and no one could've known but that _doesn't help._

"But Sideswipe's alive, and he's probably hurting and I want to talk to him so bad. But I'd probably make it worse. I can't… I had my city fall around me and that was awful. I don't think I'll ever get over Praxus being…. But Ratchet's right. We've all lost things in the war but I can't even comprehend what losing half of you could be like.

For a moment nothing more was said

"It's… it's bad. I want to talk to him. I want to be there and help but…." Understanding dawned on Bluestreak's face. "I don't know what to say." He sagged against the wall with this sudden realization.

Skyfire let his mind drift for a moment to thoughts of when he had first seen Sideswipe that day. The warrior had been _torn apart_. He had _never_ seen one of the Autobots in that severe of a condition before, not even from their worst fights.

"There was so much energon on the ground," Skyfire mumbled under his breath remembering the electric blue puddle being absorbed into the Earth.

"What?" Bluestreak squawked and looked up in surprise.

Skyfire looked a little surprised too by the fact that he had vocalized such a morbid statement. "I am sorry. I did not mean to say that out loud."

"No it's ok. Sharing is caring as Sideswipe would say. Maybe you'll have better luck then I did with coming up with something to stay." Bluestreak smiled lightly. "And you listened to me prattle on which is more than a lot are willing too. I can stand to keep the old yapper shut in return. I mean just talking about what's bothering you can help I find. I mean, you were one of the first to _see _him after all, and it was, well, it was bad. Really bad."

"It was," Skyfire affirmed.

He took a moment to collect his thoughts.

"I lost so much time in the ice." It was as good a starting point as any. "_Millennia_. In that time, everyone I knew, everything I ever considered important or held dear was destroyed. Cybertron was devastated, the science academies I had once been a part of were dismantled, destroyed or turned their efforts to war. Friends and colleagues; I do not know how many of them survived, where they are now or what side they're even on anymore. My best friend…" Skyfire choked back an odd noise not elaborating any further.

"I lost a lot of things to time while I stayed unchanged. But I never _witnessed_ any of it." Skyfire revealed. "I did not see Cybertron get cracked apart. I never saw any of the battles that would devastate entire regiments like the ones in those stories of Ra'el. My closest friend, the mech who _used_ to be my closest friend, at least he's _alive. _But most of this war I have learned about second hand. I didn't _experience_ it_."_

"And since I have woken, there have been injuries and hard times but no one died. Not on either side."

"Sunstreaker was the first," Bluestreak affirmed sadly. "That sounds so wrong to say out loud. Just…He would be _so_ pissed."

Skyfire let out a sad laugh.

"You know, when I first was pulled from the ice, in all the confusion and the jarring change there was one thing familiar."

Bluestreak didn't need to ask to know he was talking about Starscream.

"My friend had found me. I was told what happened through the filtered eyes of the Decepticons. Everything was disorienting and completely different and I did not understand how much everything had changed yet. So I tried to act on reason, previous knowledge and logic. I remembered the problems with the caste systems on Cybertron and the corruption, and why would I question the mech I had spent so many of my days with, especially after he had come to my rescue? So, at the time, I did what made sense based on what I was told. I became a Decepticon."

"It wasn't for long," Bluestreak interjected in an attempt reassure the larger mech. " You found your way to us in the end."

"It was long enough," Skyfire started bitterly, "For many to not trust me still."

And it was true. Everyone's impression of Skyfire had improved significantly over time. His cordial and gentle personality was welcome enough but the simple fact that he had ever worn the Decepticon insignia, brief as it was, was enough grounds for most to keep him at arm's length. It could be lonely.

"But then suddenly the truth came out, and I began to get a better grasp of the madness that ravaged everything I had ever known over that long time. But then I was buried under the ice again. I thought I was going to die honestly. Or at least never wake up again."

"But much to my surprise like last time, in what felt like seconds, something was pulling me out. I heard the ice crack, and suddenly I was awake and staring at Sideswipe and Wheeljack. And Sideswipe just gave me this silly grin and asked how my nap was."

Bluestreak snickered.

"I really didn't think much of it and I didn't see Sideswipe until he and Sunstreaker had attacked Megatron later that day. And Megatron just picked Sideswipe up like he was nothing and threw him."

"So you caught him," Bluestreak smiled.

"I did and he just gave me this huge grin, thanked me and ran off to fight more… Again I thought nothing of it. But later after the battle had been won, while everyone else was keeping me at an amiable arm's length away, Sideswipe completely and utterly ignored my pariah status and asked me if I wanted to help him fill the halls with five hundred thousand Dixie cups filled with water," Skyfire said completely straight faced.

For a moment there was a beat as Bluestreak blinked in confusion. But then he let out a snort of laughter. Skyfire couldn't help but grin.

"I remember that!" Bluestreak cackled and pointed an accusing finger at the shuttle. "He got them in these really perfect rows too. Did you really help him with that? Prowl was furious. You couldn't step anywhere without them crunching and puddles getting everywhere."

Skyfire let a wide grin split across his face. "Are you kidding? Of course not! I was enough of an outcast as it was at the time. The last thing I needed to do was alienate half of the command element. Besides, those cups were too difficult for me to pick up properly. Much too tiny."

There was another lapse of silence as Bluestreak calmed a bit from his giggling.

"You know," Skyfire resumed voice softer, "at the time I assumed he was only trying to get me in on that little joke of his because I was new blood and he had thought I would be easy to rope into his schemes. After I refused I thought that would be the end of our interactions beyond the daily goings of the Ark.

"But it wasn't a onetime thing. After, he kept seeking me out and not just to play tricks. But to actually _do things_ like to watch movies or to explore Portland or sometimes just to _be there_ to keep me company even if I was busy with work or an experiment. He kept spending time with me completely out of his own volition despite everyone else being wary of me. And one day I asked him why. And you know what he said?"

"What?"

"Excuse the language a bit but he said 'How could I not like you? I've dealt with half of these fraggers for years and you're the first person other than Sunny who actually saved _me_ for once in a battle. That and birds of a feather should stick together, right?'" Skyfire rubbed his temple. "It took me a while to figure out what he meant by that since he is just so social and charismatic. But after a while I noticed that sometimes he felt out of place too. He was obviously built to fight and I think that makes a lot of mechs uneasy. So no matter how jovial or likable he is, he is _just different_ enough to be on the outside even when he is smack in the middle of everything. I believe Sunstreaker felt that way too but did not feel the need to even try to sugarcoat what he was. Maybe once upon a time he had according to Sideswipe, but over time he just gave up."

"I didn't know that about Sunny."

"Not a lot of mechs did."

A pause.

"Sideswipe was my first real friend here," Skyfire managed to say through grit denta. "And I'm just… I'm going to sound horrible and selfish, but I'm glad it was him who survived.

"But also for the second time in this war I am actually angry at something. I felt loss when I learned about what happened to Cybertron. I felt betrayal and spark break when I found out what Starscream had become. I felt rage at Megatron for the role he played in destroying what my friend was and what happened to Cybertron. But this for some reason, this hit close to home and I do not believe I have ever felt such anger for a mech as I'm feeling toward Six Shot."

Bluestreak frowned in understanding and let his helmet tip back until it was against the wall.

"And I want to be there for him like he was there for me when I felt so isolated. But it's like you said, Bluestreak." Skyfire mimicked the gunner and also leaned his head back. He shuttered his optics."What would I say?"

They both sat together in the silence that followed with an odd camaraderie and common ground between them.

But neither found themselves able to go through the doors.

000000000000000000000

The instant Sideswipe had bolted from Prowl's office; Ratchet had thought that was it. This was going to be the moment Sideswipe would finally die. Against all odds, the trauma of losing Sunstreaker hadn't been enough to do him in the first time, but the second time, having to endure his brother's death a second time would be more than enough to destroy the soldier. He was sure of it.

He had been stunned when on the battlefield, even as Sideswipe's life bled away into the sand, and as his shattered spark stuttered, and began to collapse simply because of the hurt it endured, he stabilized.

It had to have been a fluke. It _must've_ been. Sideswipe was a time bomb.

But that didn't stop Ratchet from trying to do everything in his power to protect Sideswipe. He knew it wasn't rational. He knew there was truly nothing he could do. But he could not let go of the warrior. He refused. Even though for all parties involved it would probably be less painful if Sideswipe just stopped functioning he couldn't let that happen.

But all his efforts were in vain it would seem. When Sideswipe had fled after that rather horrific reveal the remaining four had just stared numbly at the door, not quite registering everything that had happened.

Prowl's doors closed with a soft click.

Jazz, bless him, worked phenomenally well under pressure. He recovered faster than even Prowl and while everyone else was standing like slack jawed morons the Special Operations officer was vaulting over Prowl's desk and giving chase.

"Get, Prime!" He hollered. Then the second the doors reopened he disappeared down the hall. In seconds only the echoes of his voice as he desperately called to Sideswipe were present.

Skids headed the command and went in search of their commander as quickly as he could. Prowl and Ratchet went after Jazz.

By the time they left the office neither Sideswipe nor Jazz were anywhere in sight. They frantically looked down both directions of the hall at a complete loss.

"Where did they go?" Prowl demanded, a rare frustration weaved into his voice.

Ratchet for a moment felt bushwhacked simply from how quickly he figured out exactly where Sideswipe was headed.

"I know where he went." With that he started down the hall Prowl closely behind. "He's looking for Sunstreaker."

"But he does not know where Sunstreaker _is_," Prowl insisted.

"It doesn't matter. Sideswipe will find him."

"That's not logical."

"Frag logic, Prowl! None of that is applying here!"

So they ran. And as they ran they passed several baffled mechs in the halls which only provided further evidence that they were on the right track.

That notion was furthered cemented when they heard a shriek.

It nearly caused the two of them to stumble. The noise was almost indescribable.

It was horror, rage, and a sadness so profound coalesced into a sound with such volume and depth, that long after its echoes pealed through the halls of the Ark its ghost would remain in the walls.

And at that moment Ratchet though, that was it. Sideswipe would be dead on arrival.

But when they finally made it through the wrecked doors of the storage space that was serving as an impromptu morgue Sideswipe was not, in fact, dead.

For a moment Ratchet almost wished he _was_. Because the sight of Sideswipe, optics alight like violet fire, face twisted into some horrible mask of uncomprehending anguish, and fury and utter despair as he clawed and clung to Sunstreaker's lifeless form was awful. Every spark wrenching, teeth gnashing, despaired _sob _that broke from Sideswipe's vocals struck Ratchet in the worst of ways. It was almost too much to bear.

All their efforts had come to _this_. All their tiptoeing around the soldier to keep him intact had completely failed.

Jazz was already trying to placate him but Sideswipe was beyond reason.

It went by like a blur. At some point Prowl and he had stepped in to assist Jazz but failed miserably. Sideswipe lashed out at them violently, seemingly running completely on feral instinct. None of them were spared from the confused barrage of hits but the worst fell upon Ratchet when the medic caught a wayward fist square in the face. It knocked him flat on his backside.

Dazed for a moment Ratchet couldn't help but wryly think this had to be some sort of Karma.

Just when he started to gather his wits a monster sized mech of red and blue was hurtling past him.

Prime.

And their commander all but ripped Sideswipe away from Sunstreaker's body a lot more violently than their leader had probably intended. But it worked and the twins were finally separated. Before Sideswipe could recover from the displacement Prime effectively caged the soldier against his own form in what looked to be desperate embrace. Something to placate the wrecked unpredictable force that was Sideswipe while sparring the others present from his violent misery.

And Sideswipe _fought_ with everything he had as he rained down a hateful succession of malediction upon his commander. But Prime only winced and endured the physical and verbal onslaught of one of his most dangerous soldiers, as he held on and tried speaking soft words.

And quickly the fight left Sideswipe as did the words. And Sideswipe locked a vice grip around his commander's shoulders and for the life of him just held on as he screamed.

And Ratchet could only watch in something akin to horror but there was also an element of morbid fascination.

Because even though it was sadness and rage he was expressing there was still so much _life_ in Sideswipe.

How could there be so much vigor of any kind in the twin after all of this?

Was this just the last hurrah? Was this an explosive encore to the young warrior's life?

And then it just stopped.

Coldness gripped at Ratchet's spark and for a brief moment he thought he had been right.

But Sideswipe did not fade to gunmetal gray, limp and expended. He was just unconscious.

It had been too much. His body had shut down from the strain as it had done not a day prior.

But he was still _alive_, and that was a mystery in itself.

No one knew how long they all stood there as they tried to absorb the whirlwind of events that had just befallen them. They were all somewhat dinged, and more than a little traumatized by proxy of what the red twin had endured. The added fact that they were in the room with the remains of Sunstreaker did little to ease the mood.

Prime was still holding Sideswipe even though the soldier had long since passed out. It was partly because Sideswipe still had a rigor mortis like grip on Prime's shoulder and no one had the heart to pries him off. No one wanted to deny him that one comfort even if he wasn't awake for it. It wasn't like Prime actually had any idea what else to do in the face of this particular situation. It was so unlike anything he had contended with before. He had known many mechs who had experienced loss but nothing of this magnitude. So, though Sideswipe was no longer awake, Prime felt this overwhelming need to be present as a reassurance to his soldier in this time of great loss and pain.

It was a fact that Sideswipe had not been designed to be alone. Yet the soldier had been left isolated for too long as everyone else dawdled and flailed about while trying to find a way to handle both the death of Sunstreaker and the new threat of Six Shot. Sideswipe, a precarious issue, a time bomb that could be set to explode at the slightest provocation, was inadvertently relegated to the side.

It also didn't help that no one wanted to be the trigger that set him off.

Everyone in the Ark knew that Sunstreaker's death was something that would not only be traumatic to Sideswipe but could also be the end of him. Everyone knew the fragile state Sideswipe was in. Even though despite all odds he survived the termination of his brother there was this feeling that his grasp on life was probably tenuous at best. Twins were not meant to outlive each other but as the days ticked by so did the tension of the situation. Everyday Sideswipe improved was terrifying for everyone else because no one wanted to cling to the false hope that it would be a permanent state.

And then Skids, their unit's theoretician who also would moonlight as the squad's psychologist if the situation required it, took the plunge and pulled from a reservoir of courage no one knew he had. He went to talk to with Sideswipe.

And what he found out was probably the most terrifying thing of all.

Sideswipe probably didn't even know Sunstreaker was dead.

And once that bit of knowledge reached the masses everyone became even more terrified of coming into contact with the lonely twin. While there were many Autobots who would have liked to have been there for the red soldier, no one wanted to be the one who said the wrong thing. No one wanted to be the one who brought up the wrong memory when there was the potential that it could completely disintegrate Sideswipe's physical well being. No one wanted to accidentally make him relive what happened in that battle against Six Shot in fear that having to relive something like that would be nightmarish and horrible enough to kill the soldier. No one wanted to inadvertently be the one to push him off the brink.

So no one went to him. No one consoled him.

And Sideswipe hadn't asked about Sunstreaker's absence which was strange but no one questioned the seemingly good fortune.

Because no one wanted to be the one who was responsible for Sideswipe dying.

And it completely exploded in their faces anyway.

Because no one had known just how broken Sideswipe had been left in the wake of his loss. Not only did he not know what had happened he had completely fabricated a facsimile brother in a sense to cope. And left to his own devices, without any one to steer the flow of information or control how the events of that day were distributed to the melee warrior, Sideswipe could not have found out in a worse way.

And so color Ratchet surprised when Earth Shattering Trauma event number two also failed to kill Sideswipe.

It didn't make sense. Based on studies of past twins, one simply did not survive the other. Even when one died in a natural more peaceful manner that would still mean the surviving one would be quick to follow. Usually it would happen within the day.

Sunstreaker did not have a nice, clean death. He had been brutally murdered, his spark literally incinerated, and Sideswipe had been injured enough that his wounds alone should have done him in. But they hadn't. Losing Sunstreaker the first time hadn't either. Losing Sunstreaker a second time still failed to destroy the remaining twin.

It was breaking Ratchet.

"I understand that this next statement is lacking somewhat in tact," Prowl confessed, sounding a little rattled despite his best efforts to sound impassive, "But in light of these recent events does anyone know how we should proceed?"

No one had an answer.

00000000000000000

Sideswipe had tried sitting up but the pull at his wrists and torso was preventing him.

He was strapped down.

"Sideswipe. Can you hear me?"

"No." Sideswipe paused then rethought his answer. "I mean yes."

"Could you please state your name and designation?"

"Autobot Sideswipe, mobile artillery soldier. Identification code S774-002." He responded robotically.

**Heh. Robotically**_**.**_

'_Oh ha, ha.'_

"I like sharp things, comic books and long walks on the beach," he elaborated.

A pause.

"Sunstreaker doesn't like the beach. He thinks the seagulls are out to get him." A chuckle bubbled up from his vocalizer. Everything was airy and loose. He felt like he was floating. "He's a private first class mobile infantry unit. Identification code S774-001. That was supposed to be my code but Sunny was throwing a hissy fit over being second."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah. It's funny. People think we have the same job. We're both frontliners after all. Wanna know why he's classified as infantry while I'm artillery? You have to keep a secret though."

"Why?" the voice through the haze asked patiently.

"Cause I have enough hidden firepower in my subspace compartments to level half of Portland."

"You do?" the voice was actually startled by that.

Sideswipe let out a snort. "Yup. Or I did. Threw it all at Six Shot. Fat lot of help it did though. My brother still got killed and I couldn't do a damn thing."

He laughed again simply because he didn't know what else to do.

"Sunny's dead cuz of Six Shot," he cracked up again sounding borderline psychotic. "Seagulls can't get him now."

Sunny, Six Shot, Seagulls. Heh. Alliteration.

"Sideswipe. Do you know where you are?" The voice asked through the miasma.

Sideswipe did his best to focus on the voice. It was the only thing that sounded grounded amidst the fog of his existence.

Neural buffers were probably involved.

Pain killers were _awesome._

"Nope."

"You're in medical."

"Oh. Do I have to be?"

"For the time being, that would be best," the voice answered.

"Ok," he said resignedly.

"I'm sorry, Sideswipe. Ratchet is going to start a stasis program so you can keep recharging."

"Sleep?"

"Yeah. Sleep."

"Asleep in the sand with the ocean washing over," Sideswipe mused.

"What was that?"

"Dream Brother. It's a song written by Jeff Buckley. I couldn't remember the guys name until now. He's dead you know."

"I wasn't aware."

"He drowned. Just like Sunny drowned in fire. They're both dead and nothing is going to bring them back no matter how hard my mind tries to make me think otherwise. "

Silence.

"What are you waiting for, voice?" Sideswipe said with more sobriety than before. "I was going to 'sleep' right?"

"Yes."

The world shut off.

00000000000000

So Sideswipe was taken back to Medical. He was sedated, and strapped down as a precaution given the (un)questionable state of his mental health.

Once he woke up, long enough to have a bit of a brief, if not strange, conversation with First Aid. But he had been extremely out of it due to the neural buffers and Ratchet ran a command to send him back into recharge.

Ratchet ran every test he could think of on the soldier only for them to all come up and say the Red one was physically fine.

According to the results Sideswipe's body was _perfectly_ repaired. His systems were up and running, his circulation system was still pumping a healthy charge through the heavy hitter's body, and his spark was still stable. Even his Primus damned cerebral cortex was reading as completely functional.

Ratchet just stared at the data pad detailing Sideswipe's condition with a hatred he usually reserved for the Decepticons. He looked over the Cybertronian glyphs several times in succession with the utmost loathing before pitching the offending thing clear across the room. He nearly took First Aid's head off but the medic in training, long since used to his boss's fits, had developed quite the reflexes over the years and was able to dodge without much effort or fanfare.

The pad hit the wall with a resounding crack and neatly split into two parts.

It. Did not. Make. _Sense_

Sideswipe was _not fine_. How could he have been? He apparently had been hallucinating his brother for over a week without anyone knowing. But nothing visible was damaged. Nothing tangible was wrong and that was making Ratchet furious.

Because Sideswipe was a broken thing but the wounds were not something _Ratchet_ could fix. Sideswipe was mortally injured, enduring damage that was _killing_ him, but it wasn't as simple as a broken system or a hemorrhaging fuel line. The damage was to his spark, to his soul. There was nothing Ratchet could do for this type of grave injury.

It would partly be up to Sideswipe whether he pulled through or not but Ratchet wasn't sure he trusted the younger one to be able to do that.

Grimly he meandered over to the broken pad and began collecting the pieces when a voice cut through his wallowing.

"Why didn't you just tell me?" Sideswipe's voice was cold, void of emotion.

Ratchet, bent over and caught mid reach to retrieve the data pad, went absolutely rigid.

Slowly he straightened and turned to face Sideswipe.

He must've_ just_ come back online. This was the second time but it appeared that he had a better grasp on his faculties from not being as bogged down by neural buffers.

Sideswipe's face was blank, fixated on the orange ceiling.

For a moment Ratchet didn't know what to say. But don't let it be said that he didn't learn from past mistakes. There would be no evading the problems any more. Sideswipe deserved directness at the very least.

"We thought you knew," Ratchet said honestly, matching Sideswipes deceptively even tone. "We thought you were coping. When you kept shutting down we thought it was simply the trauma you suffered from Six Shot. We didn't realize you were protecting yourself from the truth."

"I was acting like myself," Sideswipe choked out. "I was joking and annoying and you thought I knew that my brother was dead? How could you think I was so ok with that? How could you think I would act even remotely happy if I knew my twin was-?"

"Sideswipe, we didn't want to lose you too. When in the beginning you seemed fine we thought maybe you were handling everything better than we could've imagined but we didn't want to trigger anything that could jeopardize your health. But when we realized you didn't know we couldn't figure how..." He stopped to search for the words to better explain the situation but there were none.

"How to break it to me that Sunstreaker had his spark burned out of his body?" Sideswipe mumbled.

Ratchet had nothing to say to that. Silence reigned.

"You know," Sideswipe began voice still eerily placid, "Sunstreaker didn't want to go with me on that mission."

Ratchet marched over to the berth where Sideswipe was laid up and slammed a hand down next to Sideswipe's head.

Sideswipe didn't even flinch.

Barely restrained Ratchet snarled, "You glitch, don't you even _dare_ of thinking of going down that road. The only one to blame for what happened to Sunstreaker is Six Shot and Six Shot alone. Be damned grateful your brother was there with you because if he wasn't you wouldn't _be here_."

"But," Sideswipe rationalized disturbingly serene, "If he didn't go, _he'd be_ here."

The brief rush of anger that had surged in Ratchet, something he already was feeling a bit of regret in expressing to the hurting mech, completely dissolved out of him.

"I'm not sure he would, Sideswipe," Ratchet said softly, honestly. Truly, if the tables _had_ been turned and the twin's places were reversed, would Sunstreaker be bizarrely persevering in the land of the living despite the odds? Or would the golden twin's spark have fizzled the moment Sideswipe's did as was the fate of all the twins' before them?

"He'd _be here_," Sideswipe grit caustically. "He'd be here _for real_. You should have _told_ me."

"Sideswipe," Ratchet tried, sadly wondering just what the red twin was seeing.

He was interrupted.

"Neither I nor the voice in my head feel like speaking to you. Now if you would leave me with my crazy thoughts that would be greatly appreciated, _Doctor_," Sideswipe spat the last word with contempt.

Ratchet didn't bother defending himself. He simply got up and left.

0000000000000000000

A day ticked by. More tests were run. Sideswipe was unconscious for most of it but even when he wasn't he didn't speak to anybody. He just stared at the ceiling like it was the most fascinating thing in the world.

And test after test came back with the same results. That Sideswipe was perfectly healthy and fit for duty.

So Ratchet discharged him.

Without word he had undone the straps keeping Sideswipe on the berth and sent the young warrior back to his quarters.

Skids and Prowl had wanted to keep him under psychiatric watch but Ratchet just leveled them both with a look that could strip the paint off a chassis.

"His room is familiar. Maybe it'll do some good," Ratchet eventually explained though he wasn't sure of the truth behind those words. For all he knew being around anything that had the potential of reminding Sideswipe of Sunstreaker could set him off. But for some reason Ratchet didn't believe Sideswipe would go into a frothing rage again.

He didn't believe Sideswipe had it in him.

But some time after Sideswipe ambled out of the medical wing, and Ratchet began putting his things in order, he was approached by First Aid.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?" First Aid asked quietly.

Exhaustedly Ratchet mumbled, "Keeping here won't make any difference."

"Oh. Well…" First Aid fidgeted. "But shouldn't we keep an eye on him? Don't you think his spark might be unstable?"

"Physically he's perfectly fine," was the insipid reply. "There's nothing more we can fix."

"But his mental state. Aren't you worried he might try to…" First aid trailed off looking a little ashamed by that train of thought. He lightly scuffed the floor with the tip of his ped.

Ratchet leveled First Aid with a flat look. Colorlessly he finished the thought. "To what? Kill himself?"

First Aid's head whipped up in alarm but he quickly did his best to look anywhere but at the Senior Medic. He quaverred, "Well I'm just saying that maybe he'll-"

"No." Ratchet curtly ended whatever clarification First Aid had been scrambling to come up with before it really began.

First Aid fretted, "Are you sure there's not even the slightest-"

A surprisingly assured, "Yes," was the return. With that Ratchet turned his back to the Protectobot and went about cleaning his tools.

For a moment First Aid just watched the other medic work. Ratchet hoped the other's instincts were telling him that Ratchet intended for the conversation to end there but alas the other soldiered on. After a moment, against better judgment, First Aid timidly asked, "How can you be so certain?"

Ratchet placed both of his hands wide apart on the table's edge, a tool still in one of them making a clink as it hit the expanse of metal. He let his head drop and let out a long sigh. Sounding drained, and without turning to face First Aid he explained, "Because Sideswipe won't destroy what's left of Sunstreaker."

"But Sunstreaker's-"

"He is. But Sideswipe's not." Ratchet straightened and resumed wiping down the forceps he had been holding before setting them neatly on the table.

For a few moments longer nothing else was said.

"I don't understand," First Aid finally conceded.

"Sideswipe is Sideswipe. But Sideswipe is also Sunstreaker. And Sideswipe will not harm what's left of his brother." He picked up another tool, they looked like pliers and began running a cloth over them despite his mind being elsewhere. "On the field, when Sideswipe's spark was red, while it was collapsing, do you know what I think made it stabilize?"

"What?"

"I said Sunstreaker's name," he mused.

"And I think that some part of Sideswipe realized that if he died, nothing would hurt Sunstreaker more. He realized that if he let himself go, that would truly be the end of his brother as well. "

Ratchet was motionless, the cloth was still pressed against the pliers but no action was made beyond that.

"And I'm thinking Sideswipe loves life. He loves life with such ferocity that he's defying all logic to stay alive. I think subconsciously he's doing everything in his power to adapt to this situation to survive. But he's not just doing it for himself you see. He's doing it for Sunstreaker too."

First Aid had nothing to say to that.

"So do I think if left to his own devices Sideswipe will kill himself? The answer is no."

He set the pliers down.

"If he dies it won't be because of _that._"

The conversation ended there.

There was nothing left to say.

000000000000000000

Sideswipe liked Greek Mythology.

Something about the fantastical tales of Ancient human gods fascinated him.

It all started when he accidently ran into the Parthenon in Greece, completely obliterating one of its walls. Apparently the building had really crappy luck because that was the second time it had been partially destroyed. First time was in some war way back when, when the invading army thought it would be a great idea to store all of their explosive artillery in it but that's getting off topic.

Point is, while he was forced to help with the reconstruction, some really old French archeologist overseeing the project would tell stories of the ancient Greek mythos. Nothing like sharing your planets cultures to those from other worlds (Especially when they didn't have a choice in the matter.)

Thing was, Sideswipe had fun listening to the old French dude. The man was extremely passionate about the subject and a great storyteller. And the more time he spent in Greece, the less time he had to actually do military work back at his base.

That was several months ago. When he finally finished rebuilding the Parthenon Sideswipe had gotten Perceptor to download a whole cache of the ancient stories onto his personal data pad and had a blast reading them all for three days straight when he was assigned to restrictive duty by Prowl.

He never was much of a reader, but those human stories were just so outlandish and fun. There were tales of winged horses, Minotaurs, fawns, monstrous humans with snakes for hair, haughty gods that were always at odds with each other and fought by meddling in the affairs of humans, tales of heroism in the cases of Perseus and Hercules while there was tragedy in the stories of Antigone and Pandora. These myths had everything: drama, romance, humor, and violence. It was awesome.

There was one story though that Sideswipe remembered a little better than the others.

It was the story of Prometheus. He was a wily Titan who stole fire from the head honcho god Zeus and gave said fire to the mortal humans. This didn't go over well with Zeus. Zeus caught the Titan and punished him for the crime he had committed against the gods. Prometheus was bound to a rock doomed to forever be killed by a great eagle that ate his liver. Only his death would never be permanent. For every day he would come back to life and his liver would grow back only to be eaten again the next day.

Sideswipe felt like Prometheus.

Not in the sense that he had stolen a metaphorical fire from a metaphorical Zeus or anything.

It was Prometheus's fate he felt akin to.

Every waking moment he was in agony, feeling like he had his own giant eagle of despair killing him. Not by eating his liver though. Obviously he didn't have one of those.

No, everyday it ate his spark.

And everyday Sideswipe would awake functioning, against all odds.

It had been two days since Sideswipe finally realized what happened to his brother and he had pretty much hunkered down in his room.

A few mechs had finally_, finally_ tried talking to him. They would knock on his door and try to speak with him but all were ignored . There were a couple of apologies said outside his door that he could hear and condolences but he couldn't tell you who said them.

He didn't care anymore. He didn't want to see anyone anymore. He felt like even if he was around other people it would never overcome the complete isolation he was feeling.

It was bad. You knew it had to be bad since the command element left him alone. No Prowl breathing down his neck over all of his missed work shifts. No Ironhide lecturing the young bot for ceasing to contribute anything to the war effort. Even Ratchet left him alone. He was sure Red Alert had him on tabs just in case he went on a rampage.

He barely had the energy to get up.

Huddled in the farthest corner of his room he sat there. The smell of gun oil, acrylic and mint julep was no longer a comfort but merely another constant reminder of what he had lost. He had been sitting there so long he wondered when he would start rusting into the wall. He just didn't have the motivation to move.

Sunstreaker _was _gone.

_Sunstreaker_ was gone.

Sunstreaker was _gone_.

There it was again. There tearing at his spark. The eagle was coming to feast on his misery.

Maybe it would be permanent this time.

"Sideswipe," someone said.

He didn't acknowledge them.

"_Sideswipe."_

With dead optics Sideswipe looked up.

Sunstreaker was looking down at him. His brother took a couple careful steps forward to be in front of Sideswipe.

But it wasn't really Sunstreaker. It was a mockery of his brother, a phantom created by his own heartbreak and misery. It was all in his head.

Not real. Not reality.

If he reached out to touch his brother, to tap him on the shoulder, or touch his cheek nothing would be there. It would be like communicating with one of Hound's holograms.

"This isn't like you."

Fake Sunstreaker, for all his efforts, was ignored.

Silence oozed through the room like a thick murky fog. Its presence was blaringly obvious to everyone.

Well to Sideswipe anyway. Sunstreaker wasn't really in the room. Nope it was just crazy Sideswipe with his crazy hallucinated bro.

_**Maybe you **_**should**_** listen to yourself.**_

Oh. And the voice in his head was back. As Sunstreaker would say, fan-tucking-fastic.

Fake Sunny was a lot more patient than real _dead_ Sunny because usually at this point he'd get pissed off at Sideswipe's wallowing and smack him over the head. Fake Sunny simply dropped to his haunches and sighed. He gave Sideswipe a look.

"_Sideswipe_," he said more sternly.

"I _know_," Sideswipe mumbled listlessly. "I don't need a figment of my imagination to point it out."

"Apparently you do. If you didn't, you'd get through your seven steps of grief, get off your ass, and go do something productive."

"Shut up!" Sideswipe snarled with more spirit then he had in while. "You have no right to tell me how to feel! My brother is dead! I have a right to mourn!"

"Mourn? Mourning is sharing stories of the good times with those idiodic friends of yours in remembrance. You're letting this whole thing consume you!"

Sideswipe wanted to deck him so badly, but refrained only since it wouldn't work on something not real.

"Thing? You call this a thing! YOU'RE DEAD! A PART OF ME IS DEAD! I SHOULD BE DEAD!"

The False Sunstreaker moved as quickly and fierce as the real one had ever and slammed his hands on either side of Sideswipe's head. His face was uncomfortably close, optics glittering with rage. It seemed so real. It almost fooled Sideswipe into believing it really was his brother.

Almost.

Yet despite knowing that this shadow of his brother couldn't do anything to him, that all he had to do was simply walk past and through the phantom of his mind to get away, he couldn't move. He stayed where he was.

"Don't," Sunstreaker breathed, "_ever _say that. You should not be dead. Don't you dare make what I did for you mean nothing or I swear to Primus I will _kill _your ass in the afterlife."

"But it shouldn't have been you," Sideswipe's voice cracked ever so slightly. "He wasn't aiming at you."

"We were both going to die, Sideswipe."

That did sound a lot like Sunstreaker. The mech was always brutally honest.

"Even if I didn't save you I was going to die. He was stronger than me. I never could have beaten him on my own and he wouldn't have stopped until I was deactivated. He only did because he thought we were both dead. "

"Primus, now you really _don't_ sound like him," Sideswipe snorted bitterly. "He'd never admit someone was better than him."

"_No_," Sunstreaker snapped. "He is _no_t better than me. He is _not_ better than _us_. Don't give that bastard the satisfaction of killing us both. As long as you live he failed."

The fake Sunstreaker dropped his arms but remained in front of his sibling.

"Do you remember back in the day when we were little?"

"We were never little in any sense of the term."

"Fine, when we were younger you ass. Stop interrupting."

Sideswipe only drew his knees in closer to his chest.

"When we were younger (there you happy?) you had an identity crisis," Fake Sunstreaker explained.

"So did you," Sideswipe retorted.

"Not as bad as yours."

"I disagree."

"You were worried that we were the same mech. That there _was _no you. That you were just a copy of me or something ridiculous like that."

Sideswipe did not confirm nor deny the statement.

"Well in a way you were right," false Sunstreaker conceded, " but you were also wrong."

"Huh?"

"We're separate. We're individuals. We always have been. But at the same time we're _the same_. We aren't just halves. It's more like we're each one and a half. We're ourselves but we have a piece of each other too."

"I don't understand. And you, apparently, suck at math because that equals three and last I checked we don't have a triplet. Unless Red Alert's not telling us something," Sideswipe said with a glimmer of his usual snark but then he frowned.

This wasn't his brother. He would _not _let himself be pulled into the illusion again.

Fake Sunny stood, placed his hands on his canted hips, and was looking severely annoyed. "Look here you clodpoll, I'm trying to explain a really complicated, intangible concept and you're not exactly making it easy. All I'm trying to say is that you're my back up file. Everything I was and know is in _you_."

"Everything _you_ were?" Sideswipe choked out a short mirthless laugh. He stood and got in the figments face. He pointed an accusing finger and jabbed it at the phantom just short of touching. "_You_ are not my brother. _You_ are a figment of my damned imagination! And that means _you _have to do what_ I_ say. Now GO AWAY!"

Fake Sunstreaker just stared.

"You were lying to me!" Sideswipe screamed. "You made me think you were really him!"

"I've never lied to you," The illusion of Sunstreaker said coldly. "You've been lying to yourself."

And then he was gone.

And then Sideswipe slumped back against the wall face in his hands. And he wondered why was it that even when he was technically dead and was being imagined up by Sideswipe's crazy head, that Sunstreaker still managed to be smarter than him.


End file.
